The Antecedes of Service Quality and Patients’ Satisfaction Equally Drive Patients’ Loyalty in Private Healthcare Delivery: Thinking the future

Abstract

The healthcare industry in developing nations has recorded high progress rate in recent years, leading an initiative varied studies into the examination of patients’ comparative and varied views with regards to private healthcare providers service delivery. This study objectively focused on the hospital’s service quality, and patients’ satisfaction as a predictor and collective impact or on patient’s loyalty; it attempted to draw a distinctive border amongst quality of service and satisfaction of the patient, one with more effect size and predictive relevance to drive greater loyalty amongst the patients in a private healthcare delivery setting. A total of 562 patients recruited, participated in a cross-sectional survey with a questionnaire as the main and only data collection tool from four major private hospitals in Ghana. A path and linear regression analysis of the data was performed through SPSS 23 and Smart PLS version 3 in order to compute path coefficients, direct and indirect impacts of the factors; service quality and patient's satisfaction on patient’s loyalty to the hospital. The study suggested that both clientele perceived service quality and patient satisfaction significantly influence patient loyalty. However, patient satisfaction with service delivery had a better predictive relevance and effect size than the quality of the service on patient loyalty in this study.

Keywords

• service quality
• patients’ satisfaction
• patients’ loyalty
• private hospitals
• pls-sem