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Patient-centred strategies should be applied in health-care facilities management (HcFM) to guarantee service quality to meet patients’ needs and ensure quality patient health-care experience. This paper aims to examine the intervening influence of the quality of health-care administrative process (QAP) on the association between health-care facilities service quality and patients’ experiences with medical care.

A quantitative technique was used for this cross-sectional study in three Ghanaian teaching hospitals. A total of 622 relevant questionnaires were used for the analysis of the study using SEM-PLS.

The intervening influence of the QAP on the relationship between HcFM service quality (empathy and tangibility) and patients’ health-care experience (PHcE) were reinforced whilst that of reliability, responsiveness and assurance were not reinforced. The association between the QAP and PHcE was also established.

A high-quality health-care workforce (both core and supporting) and quality work environment provided by the FM department and QAP are essential during quality-of-care delivery, to reduce threats to patient safety to achieve exceptional PHcE. The constraint on the study is that information was gathered from only Ghana. Hence, the generalisation of the findings will be a challenge. Thus, in future, it is proposed that a comparative study across a developed country and a developing country can be conducted. Future research can assess the influence of the health-care internal appearance on patients’ satisfaction.

Practically, the administrative system can be improved by reducing patients overall waiting time. Steps must also be taken to reduce the problem of needless administrative tasks and practices to simplify administrative practices and improve patients’ total health-care experience (core health-care delivery and HcFM), as this influence patients’ total health-care experience.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this empirical validation is one of the initial studies in service quality and FM to examine how health-care administrative process quality affects the relationship between FM service quality and patients’ experiences with medical care. This framework can be adapted for research in different countries to extend knowledge.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate Ishikawa’s statement that “95% of problems in processes can be accomplished using the 7 Quality Control (QC) tools” and explore its validity within the health-care sector. The study will analyze the usage of the 7 QC tools in the health-care service sector and the benefits, challenges and critical success factors (CSFs) for the application of the 7 QC tools in this sector.

In order to evaluate Ishikawa’s statement and how valid his statement is for the health-care sector, an online survey instrument was developed, and data collection was performed utilizing a stratified random sampling strategy. The main strata/clusters were formed by health-care professionals working in all aspects of health-care organizations and functions. A total of 168 participants from European health-care facilities responded to the survey.

The main finding of this study is that 62% of respondents were trained in the 7 QC tools. Only 3% of participants in the health-care sector perceived that the seven tools of QC can solve above 90% of quality problems as originally claimed by Dr Ishikawa. Another relevant finding presented in this paper is that Histograms, Cause and Effect diagrams and check sheets are the most used tools in the health-care sector. The least used tools are Stratification and Scatter diagrams. This paper also revealed that the 7 QC tools proposed by Dr Ishikawa were most used in hospital wards and in administration functions. This work also presents a list of CSFs required for the proper application of the 7 QC tools in healthcare.

This research was carried out in European health-care facilities – and there is an opportunity to expand the study across global health-care facilities. There is also an opportunity to study the use of the tools and their impact on hospital performance using the Action Research methodology in a health-care organization.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the very first research within the health-care sector that focused on investigating the usage of all the 7 basic tools and challenging Dr Ishikawa’s statement: “95% of problems in processes can be accomplished using the 7 Quality Control (QC) tools” from his book “What is Quality Control?” The results of this study represent an important first step toward a full understanding of the applicability of these tools in the health-care sector.

The present situation of COVID-19 pandemic has put the health-care systems under tremendous stress and stringent tests for their ability to offer expected quality of health-care services, as it decides the sustainability and growth of health-care service providers. This study aims to deliver a quantitative framework for service quality assessment in the health-care industry by classifying the health-care service quality parameters into four balanced scorecard (BSC) perspectives.

To determine the service quality for the Indian health-care system, decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory and analytical network process are integrated in a fuzzy environment to contemplate the interaction among BSC perspectives and respective performance measures.

The results indicate “internal processes” perspective assumes the key role within BSC perspectives, while performance measures “nursing staff turnover” and “staff training” play the key roles. The results also signify that “patient satisfaction” is the most vital issue and can be strongly influenced by measures belonging to the “learning and growth” perspective. In “learning and growth” perspective, “staff training” is the most decisive criteria, very highly influencing “patient satisfaction”, highly influencing “profitability,” “change of cost per patient (both in and out patients)” and “outpatient waiting time” while moderately influencing “staff satisfaction,” “bed occupancy” and “nursing staff turnover”. Moreover, “staff training” criteria have a positive influence on “nursing staff turnover.”

The contributions of this study are in two folds in the domain of quantification of service quality for the health-care system. First, it delivers an assessment framework for Indian health-care service quality. Second, it demonstrates an application of the framework for a case situation and validates the proposed framework.

This study aims to examine the perceptions and evaluations of Muslim COVID-19 survivors and health workers regarding the halal, business and ethical attributes of hospitals during their interactions related to COVID-19 treatment.

Descriptive qualitative research with semi-structured online interviews was used to gather insights from COVID-19 survivors and health workers who treated COVID-19 patients. The findings were then compared with existing literature on hospital services and Sharia attributes.

The study found that patients and health-care workers in hospitals are concerned about whether the hospital follows Sharia law, the quality of health-care and hospital services and the ethical conduct of hospital staff. This is especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic, when patients are more anxious about religious conduct and the afterlife.

Hospitals need to address halal attributes in all aspects of their services for Muslim patients and business attributes such as standard health-care quality, service quality and ethical attributes. Participants indicated that when these needs are met, they are more likely to revisit the hospital and recommend it to others.

This study contributes to understanding the expectations of Muslim patients regarding hospital services that meet Islamic ethical and business requirements. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study broadens the understanding of how to better serve Muslim customers.

The purpose of this study is to determine the interactions between factors such as organizational learning, feedback about errors, punitive response to errors and communication quality in hospitals in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Colombia when adopting a culture of quality and safety (CQS) in patient care.

Based on a literature review, a self-administered questionnaire was developed and used to collect data from 417 Saudi respondents affiliated with hospitals and 483 Colombian respondents at the beginning of the pandemic. Structural equation modeling is used in this study to test the hypothesized relationships.

The results show a solid and significant predictive relationship between feedback about errors and the CQS in both countries (Colombia: b = 0.55, p < 0.001; KSA: b = 0.44, p < 0.001), but a very low and insignificant predictive relationship between no punitive response to errors and CQS (Colombia: b = –0.02, p > 0.05; KSA: b = 0.05, p > 0.05).

This study demonstrates the importance of organizational learning in fostering a CQS in the health-care sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Colombia. Recent unprecedented policy actions motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as social distancing, lockdowns and safety practices enforcement, have further highlighted this concern. Moreover, attention to the dimensions addressed in this study is required for accreditation purposes in organizations seeking to promote a CQS. Overall, this research highlights the vital role of safety and quality practices among health-care organizations, which has significant policy implications, especially in the current period of high uncertainty.

This paper contributes to the theory and practice in the health-care sector by extending the current knowledge of the impact of the quality of communications, non-punitive response to errors and feedback about errors in organizational learning and safety culture, and by presenting a novel, quantitative methodology seldom used for these topics.

Drawing upon the stimulus-organism-response model, this study aims to explore the impact of soft aspects of service quality on revisit intention through the mechanism of perceived empathy.

For the examination of the hypothesized relationships, the study adopts structural equation modelling to analyse the data of 562 respondents (i.e. 281 family members and 281 inpatients).

The empirical results suggest that service quality increased family member empathy perception, which, in turn, improved inpatients’ revisit intentions.

Past studies have focused on the roles of overall service quality. The authors have extended the literature by examining the specific but important aspect of service quality and its effects on emotional response. Importantly, the study explains that the affective reactions of a patient’s family, fastened with perceived empathy, have a central role in influencing the patients’ subsequent reactions. Moreover, the prior studies collected the data either from hospital employees or patients. However, in the present study, the authors used a unique sample (family members as well as patients) to have a deeper understanding. Thus, the study enhances the literature on the stimuli-response (i.e. service quality – revisit intentions) relationship in the context of service marketing in general and health care in specific. Important academic and managerial contributions and recommendations for future research are discussed.

This study aims to investigate the mediating role of lean management on the relationship between workforce management and value-added time in private hospitals. This study also investigates the direct influences of workforce management and lean management on the value-added time of the hospitals.

This study applied a quantitative approach to obtain data from the private hospitals’ staff in Peninsular Malaysia. A self-administered survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 287 hospital staff using a stratified random sampling method. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach was used to determine the internal consistency, reliability, validity of the constructs. The PLS-SEM method was also used to test the hypothesised research model via SmartPLS 3.3.4 version.

The findings of the study indicate that lean management has a direct and significant effect on the value-added time of private hospitals. The findings also revealed that lean management significantly mediates the relationship between workforce management and value-added time in private hospitals. The analysis of the results indicates that both workforce and lean management have a significant impact on the value-added time of the hospitals.

This study provides empirical contributions to enhance the quality of workforce management, lean management and value-added time. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into how effectively managing the workforce and providing guidelines to augment the lean management practices can ensure value-added time in Malaysian hospitals and the overall health-care industry. The lean management framework provides useful insights for the policymakers to understand the significance of workforce management, lean management on ensuring value-added time through reducing waiting times, unnecessary delays, generating a higher degree of patient safety, satisfaction and loyalty.

The research findings provide some essential indications for the health-care service providers to understand how the lean management approach can be implemented to enhance value-added time and how lean management can play a mediating role in creating a link between workforce management and value-added time in hospitals. This study also contributes to the theoretical and practical perspectives. The present study contributes to a better understanding of workforce management and lean management in health-care sectors from theoretical and practical perspectives.

This study aims to explore the empirical correlation between patient flow issues, quality of green health services and patient satisfaction in specialist medical department factors from patients’ perspectives as service consumers.

This research is a type of nonintervention empirical research that uses an open survey to explore the views and experiences of users of specialist medical department services. The targeted population is hospital patients included in the top five national PERSI (Indonesian Hospital Association) Award 2022 Green Hospital Category, with a total number of respondents of 572 people. This study uses the partial least square-structural equation modeling analysis method with the SmartPLS application.

Patient flow problems generally affect the quality of eco-friendly health services, except for the waiting time problem, which affects service quality. It should be understood as a top priority for patients to receive services from medical specialists without risking time as a core service aspect from the patient’s perspective. In addition, all variables in eco-friendly hospital services affect patient satisfaction, except in the case of visits to specialist medical departments, which do not affect medical support services and hospital practices that are responsive to the delivery of care services resulting from medical support services that are inseparable in integrated services as well as health care following medical ethics.

This study has a novelty in understanding the implications of green practice in determining patient satisfaction in medical specialist department as the epicenter of hospital services and the main object of assessment for the quality of hospital services.

The purpose of this review paper was identifying barriers to the use of telemedicine systems in primary health-care individual level among professionals.

This study used Scopus and PubMed databases for scientific records identification. A systematic review of the literature structured by PRISMA guidelines was conducted on 37 included papers published between 2009 and 2019. A qualitative approach was used to synthesize insights into using telemedicine by primary care professionals.

Three barriers were identified and classified: system quality, data quality and service quality barriers. System complexity in terms of usability, system unreliability, security and privacy concerns, lack of integration and inflexibility of systems-in-use are related to system quality. Data quality barriers are data inaccuracy, data timeliness issues, data conciseness concerns and lack of data uniqueness. Finally, service reliability concerns, lack of technical support and lack of user training have been categorized as service quality barriers.

This review identified and mapped emerging themes of barriers to the use of telemedicine systems. This paper also through a new conceptualization of telemedicine use from perspectives of the primary care professionals contributes to informatics literature and system usage practices.

This study aims to deepen the understanding of how top managers reason about handling the relationships between quality of patient care, economy and professionals’ engagement.

Qualitative design. Individual in-depth interviews with all members of the executive management team at an emergency hospital in Norway were analysed using reflexive thematic method.

The top managers had the intention to balance between quality of patient care, economy and professionals’ engagement. This became increasingly difficult in times of high internal or external pressures. Then top management acted as if economy was the most important focus.

For health-care top managers to lead the pursuit towards increased sustainability in health care, there is a need to balance between quality of patient care, economy and professionals’ engagement. This study shows that this balancing act is not an anomaly top-managers can eradicate. Instead, they need to recognize, accept and deliberately act with that in mind, which can create virtuous development spirals where managers and health-professional communicate and collaborate, benefitting quality of patient care, economy and professionals’ engagement. However, this study builds on a limited number of participants. More research is needed.

Sustainable health care needs to balance quality of patient care and economy while at the same time ensure professionals’ engagement. Even though this is a central leadership task for managers at all levels, there is limited knowledge about how top managers reason about this.