Significance of Patient Satisfaction in the Healthcare Industry: Part 1

Abstract

 Healthcare industry has been noticed as one  of the largest and fastest growing industries in the  service sector. Healthcare industry, however, has been  challenged to find alternative ways to sustain  compatibility among them due to dramatic changes in  the environment, such as competitive pressures,  alternate health care delivery mechanisms, changing  cost structures, monitoring by public and private  groups, increased information availability, and a  markedly better-informed clientele. Specially,  increasingly knowledgeable consumers, with rising demands to have information available for them to  make appropriate health care decisions, have driven  healthcare managers and administrators to focus on an  improvement of the service quality to increase patient’s  satisfaction. As efforts, many of them are trying to  adapt well-established, successful business models like  total quality management (TQM), and quality function  deployment (QFD) and also trying to learn in what  aspects of the health care service provision generate or inhibit patient satisfaction. The primary objective was  to discuss issues when employing the models to health  care industries.