The effects of service quality in health care and percieved doctor image on the patient satisfaction

The factors which are affecting customer satisfaction are increasing and becoming more complex, day by day. Its necessary to make a set of changes and innovations in health cares because of the reasons like techonologic innovations, competition, increasing level of welfare, knowledge of health literacy, emergence of more complex diseases and changing needs and demands of customers. Healthcare service providers should pay attention to the voice of customers and society, in order to survive, to make profits and gain competitive advantage. Increasing satisfaction levels of consumers and making necessary arrangements about this, can be possible by measuring the quality of healthcare services and creating a positive image of doctors, who are indispensable human resources of all healthcare service providers, in the mind of the whole society. Thus, it is necessary to reveal the doctors image which is insufficiently studied in the related literature in terms of its effects on patient satisfaction, and to monitor the change in the service quality of healthcare providers. The aim of this study is to determine the effects of healthcare service quality and percieved doctor image on customer satisfaction. Within this aim, healthcare service quality, its dimensions, related concepts and quality perceptions of patients who used the service provide from the healthcare service were examined. Later, the doctor image in the society was evaluated from the perspective of healthcare customers who have been benefitted from the healthcare services. Finally, the effects of the perception of doctor image in the society and healthcare service quality on patient satisfaction were examined. Bolu and Duzce cities are taken as the research population of this research and the survey is implemented to the people who have been benefitted from the healthcare system in the last year. A total of 599 questionnaires are applied during the field research. Five different dimensions of doctor image have been revealed as the analysis' result of the data gathered by totally quantitative methods. Also, four different factors of healthcare service quality are exposed as a result of the related analysis. A Multiple linear regression analysis is conducted in order to examine the effects of these four factors on customer satisfaction. Consequently, it is revealed that the variables of healthcare service quality and perceived doctor image affect the variable of customer satisfaction. Moreover, as a result of the correlation analysis conducted, a relationship between the variables is exposed. Apart from these analyses, it is determined that there are significant differences in between the perceptions of healthcare service quality, doctor image and customer satisfaction in terms of the demographics.