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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 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 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 paper aims to analyze the status of infrastructure, workforce and basic amenities at public health-care facilities in rural India and draw a comparison with its urban counterparts.

Rural Health Statistics data and National Sample Survey Office Report for the period 2019–10 were used to analyze lower-level public health facilities, namely, subcenters, primary health centers and community health centers (CHCs). Selected tracer indicators under World Health Organization’s (WHO) Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) mechanism such as health center density, core health workforce density and basic amenities were used to carry out the analysis. The extent of facility coverage was measured using the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) guidelines and the proportion of facilities satisfying the Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) was measured to assess the service provision quality in rural public health-care facilities.

Results indicated that the density of public health centers is higher in rural areas than in urban areas. Almost all public health-care facilities lack basic amenities in rural areas. Working positions for health specialists in CHCs barely meet the total requirement. Almost all of the public health facilities functioning in rural areas do not meet the IPHS norms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present paper is the first initiative to assess the status of rural public health-care facilities on the national level using WHO’s SARA indicators as well as NRHM and IPHS guidelines. The study is significant in terms of policy input for achieving universal health coverage in India.

This study aims to examine customer preferences toward Sharia hospitals and to provide a new viewpoint by looking at consumers’ perspectives on choosing health-care services. Despite the growing demand for halal products, halal services, particularly hospital and Sharia-based health-care services, receive very little attention in the literature compared to other Sharia-type services such as Sharia banking, insurance or even hospitality. Previous research on health care discussed under the Sharia perspective mainly focused on service quality, directing discussions to the service providers’ perspectives.

This study uses choice-based conjoint analysis to examine customer preferences toward Sharia health-care service. There are five attributes with three levels each. To reduce respondent fatigue, the authors used SPSS Orthoplan to generate an orthogonal factorial design, which resulted in 21 choice cards. Cross-sectional data were collected from an online survey using a platform from Populix, an independent panel survey provider, to ensure no sample selection bias. A total of 270 responses were obtained to represent Muslim populations across Indonesia.

The results showed that the highest preference is highly rated to the familiarity and certification of the hospital brand that implies trust and guarantees to add value with the existence of halal certification for hospitals. In addition, this study revealed that Sharia services have higher positive signals over the physical infrastructure in determining preferences. On the other hand, add-on components that support the integration of other halal industries, such as halal culinary tourism, halal tourism and integration with transportation and halal accommodation, are still minor in the current preference.

Previous research on health care discussed under the Sharia perspective mainly focused on service quality, which directs the discussions to the service providers’ perspectives. This study provides a new point of view by looking at consumers’ perspectives about their preferences and decisions to choose a Sharia hospital.

The increasing financial burden and complexity of health-care services, exacerbated by factors such as an ageing population and the rise of chronic conditions, necessitate comprehensive and integrated care approaches. While co-created service design has proven valuable in transforming some service industries, its application to the health-care industry is not well understood. This study aims to examine how health consumers are involved in health-care service co-creation.

The study searched 11 electronic databases for peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2019. Additionally, hand searches of reference lists from included studies, Google^© citation searches and searches for grey literature were conducted. The Whittemore and Knafl integrative framework guided the systematic review, and Callahan’s 6 Ws framework was used to extract data from the included articles, facilitating comparisons.

The authors identified 21 articles, mainly from the UK, North America and Australia. Despite the need for more research, findings reveal limited and geographically narrow empirical studies with restricted theory and method applications. From these findings, the authors constructed a conceptual model to enhance nuanced understanding.

This study offers four contributions. First, it introduces the Health Service Design Transformation Model for Comprehensive Consumer Co-Creation, illustrating health consumers’ multifaceted roles in shaping services. Second, consumer vulnerabilities in co-creating services are identified, linked to diverse consumer groups, power dynamics and decision complexity. Third, this study suggests broadening participant inclusion may enhance consumer-centricity, inclusivity and innovation in service design. Finally, the research agenda explores consumer experiences, organizational dynamics, value outcomes and co-creation theory for health-care service advancement.

Based on the stimuli-organism-response model and relationship marketing theory, the effect of different dimensions of Servicescape (Ambience, Cleanliness, Functionality, Spatial Layout, Employee Service Quality) on Customer Satisfaction and Behavioral Intention in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic are considered.

The study takes a quantitative approach, applying structural equation model using partial least square structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. A total of 360 responses were collected using questionnaires distributed to different individuals who visited private hospitals in the past two months in India.

Contradicting previous research, this study found that among servicescape dimensions, employee service quality had the maximum influence on customer satisfaction and cleanliness does not have any significant impact on customer satisfaction as hypothesized. Mediation results show that customer satisfaction has a partial mediation effect for all servicescape dimensions except ambience, as both direct and indirect effects are significant. Importance-performance map analysis was performed on the responses collected, and it was found that employee service quality is the most important dimension affecting servicescape, followed by functionality and spatial layout. Thus, health-care institutions should focus on these factors to keep their customers satisfied.

Past studies have focused on the roles of servicescape and customer satisfaction separately. The authors have extended the literature by examining the combined effects of both servicescape and customer satisfaction. The findings from the study, therefore, help in developing a deeper understanding of the literature on the behavior intention relationship in the context of health care, as well as in service marketing.

The provision of private health-care services by public hospitals is common in Iran. Examining factors associated with patients’ preferences to use private health services and using this knowledge in health planning and policymaking can help expand the use of such services. Thus, this study aims to investigate patients’ preferences for private health services delivered in public hospitals.

Based on a discrete choice experiment from a sample of 375 patients in a public training hospital in Qazvin, northwest city of Iran, the authors evaluated participants’ preference over the health-care attributes affecting their choice to use private health-care services delivered in the hospital. The authors also estimated the marginal willingness to pay to determine the maximum amount a patient was willing to pay for the improvement in the level of each health-care attributes.

The findings revealed that patients were 2.7 times more likely to choose private hospital services when the waiting time was reduced to less than a week. Furthermore, as patients had complimentary insurance coverage, they were over 60% more likely to receive such services from training hospitals. Finally, continuity of care and reduced health-care tariffs were significant factors that increased patients’ preference to choose private services by 52 and 37%, respectively.

Examining factors associated with patients’ preferences to use private health services and using this knowledge in policymaking can help expand such services. The findings affirmed that various incentives, including service quality factors, are required to increase the likelihood of patients choosing private services.

Green lean six sigma (GLSS) is a sustainable development approach that leads to improved patient care with improved safety and quality of service to patients. This study aims to identify, study, model and analyze GLSS success factors for the Indian health-care facility.

Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and Impact Matrix Cross-Reference Multiplication Applied to a Classification analyses have been used to understand the hierarchical structure among the GLSS success factors. This enabled the development of dependency relationships between success factors, in particular, which factors support the development of other factors.

Specifically, this study found that the success factors “commitment of management” and “financial availability” are the most critical to GLSS implementation success, as they support the development of all other success factors. Meanwhile “embedding sustainable measures at each stage of the service”; “the capability and effectiveness of real-time data collection”; and “feedback and corrective actions” most directly support the GLSS implementation in the health-care facility and serve as the final indicators of implementation progress.

The major implication of this research work lies in suggesting a direction for practitioners to execute the GLSS approach through a systematic understanding of classification and structural relationships among different enablers. This study also facilitates health-care managers to explore different GL wastes in hospitals and challenges to sustainability pursuits in health-care that assist in an organization’s efforts toward sustainable development.

This research work is the first of its kind that deals with the identification and analysis of the prominent factors that foster the inclusive implementation of GLSS within the health-care facility.

This paper aims to identify human rights violations of patients during the early periods of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana by investigating the experiences of people on how health-care professionals discharged their responsibilities during the time in question.

Explanatory design of the mixed methods approach was adopted, with the intention of collecting both quantitative and qualitative data sequentially, and then integrating the results at the interpretation stage. The approach enriched the quality of data collected as it offered the advantage of shedding light on the primary motivations and reasons for attitudes and behaviours and helped to provide an in-depth understanding of how individuals interpret the happenings around them and their experiences. Thus, although some amount of quantitative method was used in the data collection, the core of this paper is based on the qualitative interpretations.

The study reveals that health-care professionals, especially those in the Tema Metropolis, undermined certain fundamental human rights of patients during the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes failure to provide information to patients about treatment options and potential risks of medications; failure to seek the informed consent of patients before performing medical procedures; denial of access to medical files of patients for transfer; and inability or failure to provide medical ambulances services to patients on time.

Although many publications on human rights dimensions and health protective issues on COVID-19 pandemic are available on a global scale, still little information pertaining to experiences of individuals with health-care professionals during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in Ghana through the lens of patient’s rights exists. This paper, therefore, fills an important gap in health-care management information, critical for policy decision-making processes regarding patient’s rights in times of pandemic control.