Search results

This study aims to investigate and test the impact of competitive priorities, in terms of quality, speed, dependability, flexibility, cost and patient engagement, on patient satisfaction with healthcare services. It considers patients’ rather than managers’ points of view to collect responses about competitive priorities.

This research employed a cross-sectional survey design to analyze a sample of customers through an empirical study of 488 patients in Qatar’s healthcare service context.

The confirmatory factor analysis results show that competitive priorities and engagement positively and significantly impact patient satisfaction.

Researchers can use this methodology to explore the role of competitive priorities in different service contexts and sectors. The researchers conducted the study in Qatar; therefore, the results are not generalizable to all healthcare sectors. However, regardless of geographic location, the research approach can be used in healthcare.

Managers can employ the developed scales to diagnose competitive priorities and improve customer service experiences.

The paper is original as it suggests using competitive priorities as a measurement tool for predicting patient satisfaction compared to prior research that mostly measured competitive priorities based on internal perspectives (managers’ perspectives). Further, this paper is original because it depends on the external perspective (customers’ perspective) for the competitive priorities for measuring patient satisfaction.

This study aimed to compare mortality rate, length of stay (LOS) and hospitalization costs at different priority levels for a patient admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) at a public tertiary hospital in Qazvin, Iran. This study also aimed to predict influencing factors on patients’ mortality, ICU LOS and hospitalization costs in different admission groups.

The authors conducted a retrospective cohort study among patients who mainly suffered from internal diseases admitted to an ICU of a public hospital. This study was conducted among 127 patients admitted to ICU from July to September 2019. The authors categorized patients into four groups based on two crucial hemodynamic and respiratory status criteria. The authors used a logistic regression model to predict the likelihood of mortality in ICU admitted patients during hospitalizations for the four prioritization groups. Furthermore, the authors conducted a multivariate analysis using the “enter” method to identify risk factors for LOS.

Results showed a statistically significant relationship between the priority of being admitted to ICU and hospitalization costs. The authors’ findings revealed that age, LOS and levels of consciousness had a predictability role in determining in-hospital mortality. Besides, age, gender, consciousness level of patients and type of the disease were mentioned as affecting factors of LOS.

This study’s findings emphasize the necessity of categorizing patients according to specific criteria to efficiently use available resources to help health-care authorities reduce the costs and allocate the budget to different health sectors.

The need to better understand patient priorities in order to provide higher levels of patient care is an ongoing challenge for managers across the UK NHS. Indeed, the failure of service providers to understand patient priorities can lead to action plans, investment and management decisions which are internally rather than externally focused. This paper seeks to report on the development and evaluation of a tool for measuring the gap between patients’ priorities and their perceptions of an NHS service, and the match between the patient and management perspective.

The tool, an adaptation of the renowned SERVQUAL measurement methodology, is tested in UK NHS breast‐screening unit. The tool is used to measure the perceptions of two different types of patients, as well as those of three different types of staff.

The study suggests that the tool can be used to quantify the gap between patient priorities and their perceptions of health service performance. The tool may also be used to measure staff's perceptions of patient priorities and perceptions, with a view to identifying those functional staff who best understand the patient perspective.

The methodology facilitates the identification of key differences in the expectations and perceptions of different health service market segments, which could have direct implications for service design and delivery at an operational level. Furthermore, it can be applied to identify differences in functional perspectives and thus expose valuable opportunities for intra‐organisational learning.

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) has been recognized as a “gold standard” set of “practical standardized measures” for assessing hospital service quality. Beginning with the HCAHPS, the purpose of this paper is to extend efforts to assess patient-centered communication (PCC) and the quality of healthcare and presents a scale for measuring patient perceptions and expectations of service quality in an emerging economy context.

A self-administered survey of patients in private hospitals (N = 171) was conducted to test the proposed framework. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to establish the measurement model. Multiple regression analysis was used to explain the scale's predictive ability. ANOVA was used to analyze service quality gaps and rank patients' priorities.

Five components of PCC are identified. Among these, nurse affective communication has a significant positive effect on patient satisfaction. The gap analysis shows that patients have high expectations for doctors' affective communication, while they perceive a low level of service performance in the realm of nurse affective communication. The study highlights a new means of measuring “reliability” in healthcare. Important findings on patients' priorities are evaluated and discussed.

Healthcare organizations and practitioners can improve patient-centered care by stressing the dimensions of PCC, including clinicians' affective and instrumental communication.

The study expands the understanding of HCAHPS instruments in an emerging economy context and opens avenues for more widespread use of the measures. The research contributes to the literature on patient-centered care and healthcare service quality by proposing a scale for managing specific practices and interactions in healthcare.

Investigates the increased waiting time costs imposed on society due to inappropriate use of the emergency department by patients seeking non‐emergency or primary care. Proposes a simple economic model to illustrate the effect of this misuse at a public or not‐for‐profit hospital. Provides evidence that non‐emergency patients contribute to lengthy delays in the ER for all classes of patients. Proposes a priority queuing model to reduce average waiting times.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the perceptions of research priorities as expressed by people with spinal cord injury (SCI).

A descriptive study based on feedback from patients, rehabilitated following SCI was conducted in order to explore their felt needs for further research. A questionnaire was sent to 225 people who were rehabilitated following SCI. They were asked to indicate three priorities for further research on disability related issues. The questionnaire had a list of issues on different facets of disability following SCI. In total, 62 patients responded to the questionnaire.

Research on urinary incontinence was stated to have the highest priority among these different groups according to their age, marital status, duration of disability, and employment status. Rehabilitated patients of all age groups, irrespective of marital or employment status or duration of disability, indicated that further research is to be done on urinary incontinence.

A similar study among groups in a larger population would add further information.

Practitioners should address these expressed needs of the persons with SCI in the community.

These expressed needs will increase awareness among the team involved in the management of SCI in the community thus fill the gap between research and practice.

Research focussing on various problems associated with spinal cord injury have been carried out globally. On most of the occasions, the perceptions of the affected people regarding research areas are seldom obtained. This research would guide future directions of rehabilitation research in the field of spinal cord injury.

The purpose of this study is to provide a decision support tool to deal with the problem of seting priorites among patients competing for limited health care resources. Limited resources and unlimited demands prevent health-care services to be provided to all those in need. This became publicity evident with the current Covid-19 pandemic. Although controversial, health care rationing has always existed and is now inevitable. Setting priorities becomes then inevitable. How to define those priorities is a complex and yet irresolvable issue mainly because it involves several and conflicting criteria, translated into efficiency and equity considerations. This is why multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was introduced to health care as an appropriate decision-support framework for solving complex problems.

This paper proposes the application of two combined approaches – analytic hierarchy process (AHP)-Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and AHP-VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR), as decision support tools to rank patients with competing needs in a more effective and equitable way. A rationing scenario involving four patients, differentiated by personal characteristics and health conditions, is used to illustrate, test and compare the applicability of both approaches. After extraction of the relative weights of the prioritization criteria involved in the hypothetical scenario from paired wise comparison methods, TOPSIS and VIKOR priority setting methods were designed.

Results suggest that patients ranking from both combination approaches are similar and in accordance with the order made directly by health-care professionals. Therefore, the relative weights computed by AHP in combination with TOPSIS and/or VIKOR methods could be used with suitable applicability by health-care decision-makers.

This study is the first attempt to apply a combination of MCDA methods to patients’ prioritization context and the first to cross previous studies to deepen and consolidate the research.

Effective transitions from child and adolescent to adult services are important for continuity of care for patients with eating disorders. This study aims to examine the relative importance of a series of statements about the transition process, elicited from an earlier service evaluation, from the perspectives of patients, parents/carers and clinicians.

Twenty-eight participants completed a Q-sort task ranking 40 statements, developed from an earlier study, using a normal distribution pattern on a scale, which ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree, to identify their priorities for transition. Analysis resulted in the extraction of four factors explaining 52% of the variance.

Four distinct factors were elicited: “parents and carers need including too”, “facilitating effective transfer between services”, “supporting the patient through transition” and providing “timely, patient-centred care”. The study enabled similarities and differences in priorities to be observed for the three respondent groups.

These rankings, noting the differences between the respondent groups, can be used to inform the development of effective transition protocols. This study suggests these protocols should ensure a person-centred approach; timely planning; include parents/carers; provide continuous care and have good transfer of information and sensible timing of transitions. Differences in priorities/opinions can be addressed through open communication channels.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first UK-wide study examining priorities for transition from the perspectives of patients, parents/carers and clinicians.

The purpose of this paper is to survey Swedish healthcare leaders' patient safety awareness, the priority they give to safety issues and their views on suitable safety management strategies.

A total 623 leaders of a sample of 1,129 responded to a mail questionnaire (55 percent response rate). Descriptive statistics of the responses are presented as frequency distributions across respondent subgroups. Means were tested for similarity by a repetitive one‐way ANOVA procedure. Homogeneous response groups were sought by hierarchical cluster analysis.

Swedish healthcare leaders show relatively high safety awareness and how their organizations prioritize safety management. There is a marked polarization between leaders; half feel that the system works reasonably well, and that adequate funds are available to improve or maintain services. The other half thinks the system needs major change and calls for additional funding. A majority sees system errors as the main cause for adverse events; a substantial minority find human errors to be more important. Two‐thirds were willing to make safety performance information on organizations and specialties public, one third was restrictive.

Survey instruments used to explore leaders' patient safety views have not yet been rigorously tested against psychometric criteria. One hospital type was slightly over‐represented and three regions somewhat under‐represented in the respondent groups.

This is the first systematic attempt to explore the views of Swedish healthcare leaders on patient safety. It provides input to a national strategy to improve patient safety.

The healthcare context is a highly complex one for a variety of reasons. One priority that is, however, firmly established on the agenda for the future is that of patient consultation and involvement in the design and delivery of healthcare services. What is an important next step is to consider ways in which such consultation can be achieved in practice. In order to provide high quality services that represent good value for all concerned, consideration also has to be given to the multiple stakeholder groups that exist in healthcare. The Servqual instrument and the nominal group technique can both provide some useful insights into patient and stakeholder priorities from both the service user and the service provider perspective which can then be incorporated into the service design and the service planning processes.