The impact of patient relationship management applications on satisfaction and loyalty: Application in the healthcare organization

A patient is the main focus of the healthcare industry both in the world and in our country. Individuals go to the healthcare organizations to keep, enhance, and improve their existing health conditions. After the service the patients receive from healthcare organizations, the service quality they perceived positively affects the patient satisfaction and this causes positive impacts on the patients such as loyalty to the organization, preference of the same organization when required, willingness to pay more fees, suggestions for the improvement of the organization, and drawing more patients via word-of-mouth marketing, thus, healthcare organizations give should give importance to the practices of patient relationship management. Considering this opinion, a model consisting of the variables of the perceived service quality, patient satisfaction, patient loyalty, and patient value affecting the practices of patient relationship management was developed in this study and the questionnaire was applied to 1681 outpatients and inpatients (826 inpatients and 777 outpatients) who visited a Medical Faculty Training and Research Hospital of a state university in Istanbul. As a result of the analyses, it was determined that the practices of patient relationship management had positive effects on the perceived quality of service and patient loyalty and correspondingly, patient loyalty positively affected the value perceived by the patient, patient satisfaction had an intermediary role considering the impact of patient loyalty in the practices of patient relationship management and patient loyalty differed in terms of patient percieved value and the practices of patient relationship management differed considering the perceived quality of service and loyalty regarding outpatients and inpatients according to the demographic classification criteria. This study which discusses the patient relationship management with a holistic view is important as it will not only make contributions to literature by filling the gap in national and international literature but also it will guide the practitioners.