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The purpose of this paper is to develop a scale for the measurement of service quality at the manufacturer–doctor interface of the pharmaceutical supply chain and to study the impact of service quality on doctor’s satisfaction and doctor’s prescribing behavior. Doctors from two major states of South India were selected for the study. A doctor perceived service quality scale with three dimensions having eight items was developed through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in the pharmaceutical context. Structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was used to show the relationship between service quality, satisfaction and prescribing behavior. The critical factors of service quality were identified, and a model was developed showing the relationship between service quality, doctor’s satisfaction and doctor’s prescribing behavior which has not been explored in any research. This model will be helpful in further development of new concepts and for analyzing the reasons for the failure of doctors in providing quality service. 

A total of 200 doctors from three major cities of South India were selected. A doctor perceived service quality scale with three dimensions having eight items was developed through CFA using Parasuraman Service quality scale (Parasuraman, 1985, 1986, 1988) as the basis in the pharmaceutical context after focus group discussions with company experts, retailers, doctors and academicians. SEM technique was used to examine the impact of service quality on doctor’s satisfaction and prescribing behavior.

There is no universal set of dimensions and items that determine service quality in manufacturing industries, especially at the manufacturer–doctor interface of the pharmaceutical supply chain though service quality plays a very important role in affecting the performance of manufacturing industries. The critical factors affecting the quality of service for a pharmaceutical company at the manufacturer–doctor interface of the supply chain were identified, and its impact on doctor’s satisfaction and their prescribing behavior were studied.

This research contributes to the development of service quality scale for measuring service quality in pharmaceutical manufacturing company, especially with reference to manufacturer–doctor interface of the supply chain which was not thoroughly explored earlier. A model was developed showing the positive relationship between service quality and doctor’s satisfaction and doctor’s prescribing behavior in pharmaceutical supply chain which is a new concept not proved experimentally.

The study is very useful for the pharmaceutical manufacturing companies to identify the service quality factors affecting doctor’s satisfaction and their prescribing behavior thereby leading to development of new measures for improving the performance of the pharmaceutical supply chain. This study can lead to identification of problems involved in pharmaceutical supply chain and also leads to generation of new ideas and development of new concepts for influencing doctor’s satisfaction and doctor’s prescribing behavior which in turn can help in providing better health.

This study actually has a direct impact on the society. If factors affecting doctor’s satisfaction and prescribing behavior are identified automatically, the end consumer, i.e. patient, can be satisfied in a better way, and better medical care can be provided. If doctor’s problems are identified, then better solutions can be provided to patients; this in turn has a lot of positive impact on the pharmaceutical company and society in general.

This research will act as a base for generating ideas relating to how quality service provided by a company will have an impact on doctor’s satisfaction and his prescribing behavior in pharmaceutical supply chain .To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind of the conceptual aspects of service quality, satisfaction and loyalty explained in terms of pharmaceutical supply chain as service quality, doctor’s satisfaction and doctor’s prescribing behavior and proved experimentally.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the rationality differences of cognition of non-technical medical services in different groups, and to provide countermeasures for improving non-technical medical services.

Literature analysis, expert interviews, questionnaire survey and frequency analysis were taken to reveal the influencing factors of non-technical medical services. Grey correlation methods were taken to compare the rationality differences of cognition of non-technical medical services by analysis influencing factors’ scores marked by different groups.

A total of 12 influencing factors of non-technical medical services were obtained, including “doctor’s working career”, “doctor’s strict implementation of medical treatment norms and medication guidelines”, “doctor’s service awareness”, etc. And rationality differences of cognition of non-technical medical services were confirmed as follows: the doctors’ cognition was more reasonable compared with patients; the women’s cognition was more reasonable compared with men; the lower aged groups’ cognition was more reasonable compared with higher aged groups; and people with doctoral degree had a less reasonable cognition compared with others.

The authors systematically discussed the cognition differences of non-technical medical services among different people, and provided some countermeasures reasonably.

Despite the prevalent use of professional status and service feedback in online healthcare markets, the potential interaction relationship between two types of information is still unknown. This study used the signaling theory to examine the substitute relationship between professional status and service feedback in patients' doctor choice, as well as the moderating effect of illness severity.

To test the paper's hypotheses, we constructed a panel data model using 418 doctors' data collected over a period of six months from an online healthcare market in China. Then, according to the results of the Hausman test, we estimated a fixed-effects model of patients' choice in online healthcare markets.

The empirical results showed that the effect of a doctor's professional status and service feedback on a patient's doctor choice was substitutable. Moreover, patients' illness severity played a moderating role, in that the influence of professional status on a patient with high-severity illness was higher than that on a patient with low-severity illness, whereas the influence of service feedback on a patient with low-severity illness was higher than that of a patient with high-severity illness. In addition, we found that illness severity negatively moderated the substitute relationship between professional status and service feedback on a patient's choice.

These findings not only contribute to signaling theory and research on online healthcare markets, but also help us understand the importance of professional status and service feedback on a patient's choice when seeking a doctor online.

This paper aims to reveal the factors patients consider when choosing a doctor for consultation on an online medical consultation (OMC) platform and how these factors influence doctors' consultation volumes.

In Study 1, influencing factors reflected as service features were identified by applying a feature extraction method to physician reviews, and the importance of each feature was determined based on word frequencies and the PageRank algorithm. Sentiment analysis was used to analyze patient satisfaction with each service feature. In Study 2, regression models were used to analyze the relationships between the service features obtained from Study 1 and the doctor's consultation volume.

The study identified 14 service features of patients' concerns and found that patients mostly care about features such as trust, phraseology, overall service experience, word of mouth and personality traits, all of which describe a doctor's soft skills. These service features affect patients' trust in doctors, which, in turn, affects doctors' consultation volumes.

This research is important as it informs doctors about the features they should improve, to increase their consultation volume on OMC platforms. Furthermore, it not only enriches current trust-related research in the field of OMC, which has a certain reference significance for subsequent research on establishing trust in online doctor–patient relationships, but it also provides a reference for research concerning the antecedents of trust in general.

With the advent of the Digital 2.0 era, online doctor–patient (D–P) interaction has become increasingly popular. However, due to the fact that doctors use their fragmented time to serve patients, online D–P interaction inevitably has some problems, such as the lack of pertinence in the reply content and doctors' relative unfamiliarity with their individual patients. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to excavate whether potential D–P social ties and D–P knowledge ties accentuate or attenuate the influence of patient selection (online and offline selection).

The authors used the methods of text mining and empirical analysis on the structured and unstructured data of an online consultation platform in China to examine the research hypotheses.

The findings illustrate that the potential D–P social ties increase the influence on patient selection, as do the potential D–P knowledge ties. Specifically, the effect of social ties on patient selection is positively moderated by patient health literacy. Conversely, health literacy weakens the link between knowledge ties and patient selection. In addition, the doctor's title weakens the influence of social ties on patient selection, in contrast to knowledge ties (partially).

This study provides guidance for doctors and patients on how to communicate effectively and alleviate tension within D–P relationships. The study’s findings have both theoretical and practical implications for both doctors' and online platforms' decision-making.

Doctors' labour and medicines are special necessities for human survival and evolution. Since China launched the healthcare reform, the theoretical circles' discussions have not yet clarified the respective special properties of doctors' labour and medicines as goods and the internal relations between doctors' labour and medicines at the level of the theoretical basis.

Health is a prerequisite for people's all-round development, a precondition for economic and social development and the people's common aspiration. The all-round moderately prosperous society could not be achieved without people's all-round health.

The authors believe the socialist relation between doctors' labour and medicines with Chinese characteristics should be one that is people-oriented, and the corporatization of hospitals or the capitalization of doctors' labour should be avoided.

In this paper, the authors explore the particularity of doctors' labour, particularity of medicine production, circulation, consumption and the internal relations between doctors' labour and medicines by using the analytical approach of Marxist political economy while considering the special roles of doctor's labour and medicines in the reproduction of labour power and put forward the theoretical basis for the segregation of doctor's labour and medicines.

The purpose of this paper is to show how a major public benefit entity in New Zealand uses formal accountability mechanisms and informal reporting to justify its existence. The paper is premised on the view that the accountability relationship for public benefit entities is broader and more complex than the traditional shareholder‐manager relationship in the private sector.

This longitudinal single case study of the Department of Conservation (DOC) spans the period from its establishment in 1987 to June 2006. It involves the detailed examination of the narrative disclosures contained in the annual reports, including the Statement of Service Performance, over the period of the study. A number of controversial items that appeared in the printed media between 1 April 1987 and 30 June 2006 were traced through the annual reports to establish whether DOC used impression management techniques in its annual reports to gain, maintain and repair its organisational legitimacy.

The analysis found that the annual report of a public benefit entity could play an important legitimising role. Using legitimacy theory, it is argued that assertive and defensive impression management techniques were used by DOC to gain, maintain and repair its organisational legitimacy in the light of extensive negative media publicity.

This is one of the first studies to examine the relationship between narrative disclosures in annual reports and legitimacy in the public sector. The paper provides a valuable contribution to researchers and practitioners as it extends the understanding of how public benefit entities can make use of the narrative portions of the annual report when pursuing organisational legitimacy.

This study aims to analyze the influence of the dimensions of Sharia hospital service standards, religiosity commitment and trust of Muslim patients on attitudes and satisfaction, as well as the implications of loyalty.

This study was carried out by analyzing data obtained from a survey with purposive sampling techniques with 425 patients in an Indonesian-certified Sharia hospital and analyzing it using partial least squares structural equation modeling software to test the path modeling and the relationship between the instruments.

This study shows that hospital amenities, doctor’s services, nurses’ services, health-care technicalities and hospital environmental and administrative behavior affect patient satisfaction. In addition, religiosity and trust in encouraging patient attitudes determine patient satisfaction. High satisfaction points will increase loyalty to Sharia hospitals.

This study encourages managers to maximize the quality of humanist Islamic medical services and the infrastructure of comfortable facilities. In addition, hospitals need to improve their holistic atmosphere, technical services and administrative behavior so that they can become essential value for hospital marketing – the development of competence and ethical behavior of health workers through various training programs internally and externally.

This study presents the determination of Sharia hospital service standards accompanied by a commitment to religiosity and trust as a psychological perspective of Muslim patients on attitudes and satisfaction and its implications on the brand loyalty of Indonesian Sharia hospitals that have been officially certified.

The purpose of this paper is to examine changes in patients' satisfaction after their doctor has participated in a brief educational intervention on medicolegal risk management.

Questionnaire completed by ambulatory patients, measuring satisfaction with their doctor's communication skills before and three months after the doctor participated in a three hour workshop on medicolegal risk management. 75 obstetrician/gynaecologists (O&Gs) and 99 general practitioners (GPs) were each rated by 60 of their patients following a consultation in their clinical rooms.

Patient satisfaction as evidenced by change to “complete satisfaction” with doctor's communication skills and overall satisfaction with the clinical encounter.

Participants had high initial patient satisfaction ratings and these were found to have improved across all parameters three months after the educational intervention.

The educational intervention was successful in improving doctors' communication skills as evidenced by enhanced patient satisfaction in all key areas, including those most frequently associated with patient complaint, litigation and adverse outcome.

The findings of the present study show that healthier patients, older patients, males, those with a lower level of education, those who perceive system performance to be high and those with lower levels of system usage are more satisfied with both their healthcare and health plan than their opposite counterparts. Regarding the incremental effects of these variables, the most striking finding is the strong, pivotal role of physicians in influencing patient satisfaction with healthcare. In regard to satisfaction with health plan, the extent of the problems that members have had with their health plan has by far the largest statistical influence on their satisfaction with that plan. The effects of other independent variables including the three demographic variables, self‐stated health status, number of visits to doctor’s office or clinic, and issues related to access, though significant, show relatively small statistical influences on overall satisfaction with healthcare and health plan.