Role of Satisfaction with Health Care Services in Increasing Patient Loyalty: an Ambulatory Setting
Abstract: Health care
providers must be able to provide services that can satisfy the patient. This
encourages patient loyalty so that competitiveness can be preserved. This study
aimed to examine the correlation of patients’ satisfaction to their loyalty
towards health care facilities.
Methods: An analytic cross-sectional study was conducted on 50
respondents from Anggrek Specialist Polyclinic at Dr. Hasan Sadikin General
Hospital Bandung (ambulatory setting) who met the inclusion criteria during the
period of September to October 2014. Questionnaires that had been validated and
tested for reliability were used. Rank Spearman test was used to analyze the
correlation between patient satisfaction and patient loyalty. This study used
five dimensions of service quality to measure patient satisfaction, i.e.
tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy.
Results: The study showed that most (84%) patients felt unsatisfied and
only 14% was loyal towards the health care services they received. Satisfaction
and loyalty showed positive correlation with p=0.001 (p<0.05) and r=0.439,
which showed a moderate correlation.
Conclusions: There is significant correlation between patient
satisfaction and loyalty in Anggrek Specialist Polyclinic at Dr. Hasan Sadikin
Hospital. This study can be an evaluative material for health care providers to
encourage improvement of service quality as to increase patient satisfaction
and loyalty.
Keywords: Ambulatory, health
care service, patient loyalty, patient satisfaction
Author: Citra Restia Yusri,
Marlianti Hidayat, Henni Djuhaeni
Journal Code: jpkedokterangg170145
