Search results

This paper focuses on Medicare risk contracting in the USA. The issue of the current method of reimbursement versus Medicare risk contracting is explored. Risk sharing and payment mechanisms are described and analyzed. The strengths and weaknesses (score‐ card) of Medicare beneficiaries entering HMOs are reviewed. Finally, the issue of selection bias in Medicare HMOs is discussed regarding future implementation strategy.

Although gainsharing is an old organizational development intervention, the literature has not sought to provide an integrative framework for its study. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of its conceptual perspectives, organizational theory, and design to meet the need of such future research.

Substance abuse continues to increase and permeate all sectors of US society including the medical profession. This article details the importance of testing everyone associated with health care organizations, including physicians, as a means of protecting patient welfare, increasing quality of care, and reducing negligence lawsuits, as well as providing treatment and recovery opportunities for those with addictions.

As the health‐care industry undergoes major change, a method of “accounting for quality” has become a key factor in health services delivery and fiscal accountability. This article examines several aspects of health care that inhibit the development of common methods of defining and accounting for quality. Key issues and characteristics of the health‐care market are addressed and the article provides a synthesis of these obstacles to the process of deriving common measures and standards of quality that may be utilized by the health‐care industry for financial decisions.

The development of managed care plans is the most dramatic change in the USA’s health care system in recent decades. Despite the widespread growth, society is increasingly concerned with the quality of managed care programs. This article addresses the regulatory pressures that are being placed on managed care organisations, and examines what health care practitioners can do to minimize the impact of increased regulation. We look at the major factors that are likely to bring about changes in the health care sector, and predict how these changes will affect the quality of health care that is being delivered in the near future. Addresses how quality can become and remain the primary factor in the delivery of health care services. Finally, concludes that greater involvement by the federal government is necessary to protect consumers’ rights, and ensure better quality health care from managed care programs.

With a defined population served, contracted provider panels and the nature of care delivery integration, managed care has provided a solution, though not a panacea, to provide equitable services, standardized and prevention oriented cares to its enrolled members. Combined with the earmarked capitation reimbursement system and a series of cost containment and utilization review techniques, managed care has also demonstrated potently its capacity in cost‐saving and quality promotion. Presents steps and measures related to managed care that federal government has taken to manage care and contain cost. It is crucial to identify and promulgate best practices continually, while managing utilization of resources for improving health care, containing cost, and equalizing medical care access to a greater proportion of the population. Concludes that it may take time for a universal adoption of managed care. However, Americans may actually benefit more from having a standard level of health care that managed care could achieve and provide.

This study aims to explore the relationship between the perceived quality of services provided by specialist physicians and patients' attitudinal responses along cognitive, emotive and conative levels.

The SERVQUAL model was used to evaluate the quality of the medical services. The data were collected in a survey of medium‐level executives enrolled in professional MBA and executive BA programs in Israel.

The study shows that patients' evaluations regarding service quality do affect significantly their attitudinal responses. It has also found out that service dimensions relating to anxiety reduction and the desires to reduce perceived risk, namely the Assurance and the Reliability dimensions are the most important for patients in these kinds of service encounters.

The study should encourage service managers of health care‐providing organizations to use these results to ensure higher patient satisfaction. These results indicate that, in these kinds of medical service encounters, physicians should explicitly recognize the role of service quality perceptions for anxiety reduction and incorporate as many anxiety‐reducing cues as possible in the environment of such interactions.

The research reinforces the importance of patients' perceptions of service quality in medical encounters. The study shows that such perceptions are relevant for patients in medical service encounters of the intermediate type where such patients are treated by specialist physicians. It shows that such perceptions affect the levels of patients' satisfaction from such encounters at both the cognitive and affective levels. They also affect their intentions to act following such encounters in the short, intermediate and long time spans.

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.