Modelling patient satisfaction in healthcare

Abstract

Patient satisfaction is often a top priority within healthcare organisations. This satisfaction is measured through patient surveys and understanding patient's perceptions of the services they are offered. Increasingly, patient satisfaction has been regarded as a major factor in measuring overall service quality of a healthcare firm. One area that hospitals have found challenging is their service offered over the phone. It is therefore important to observe the call centre operations within a healthcare organisation to fully understand what leads to patient dissatisfaction, and thereby recommend ideas to improve patient satisfaction. The present study analyses a hospital that is facing challenges related to their phone services. The goal is to improve the overall service quality, ultimately leading to improvement in patient satisfaction. Quality tools such as Pareto analysis and fishbone diagrams were used to conduct the analysis. Then, quantitative models from waiting line management were used to determine optimal staffing levels of call centre agents and triage nurses to meet quality goals as stipulated by the management, in terms of acceptable customer waiting time.