Exploring patient's experiential values and its impact on service quality assessment by Indian consumers in public health institution: A qualitative study

• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Author: Alisha Dhal,Anjali Sharma
• Date: 01 December 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2800

PRACTITIONER PAPER

Exploring patient's experiential values and its impact on

service quality assessment by Indian consumers in public

health institution: A qualitative study

Alisha Dhal

1

| Anjali Sharma

1,2

1

Marketing Department, Indian Institute of

Management Indore, Indore, India

2

JGLS, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat,

India

Correspondence

Anjali Sharma, Marketing Department, Indian

Institute of Management Indore, FPM

Residence, Room No. 318, Prabandh Shikhar,

Rau-Pithampur Road, Indore 453556, Madhya

Pradesh, India.

Email: anjali@jgu.edu.in

Satisfying patients is one of the essential facets of healthcare initiatives by any

nation. The provision of high-quality services is indispensable for the success of any

service provider. This article aims to help determine experiential values that would

aid in understanding the concept of healthcare quality assessment which has long

been a means of controversy in practice and academic literature. Patient's experien-

tial values, both extrinsic and intrinsic, impact the way patients assess the quality in

terms of the service benefits received by them. This article has adopted a qualitative

method to find and develop a patient-centric quality assessment framework. Ten

interviews were conducted with patients admitted more than a day in the private

ward of a public hospital and their relatives who accompanied them (i.e., five patients

and five relatives). Nvivo 12 Pro generates themes from the interviews and then tri-

angulates with the observations and literature. With the help of this study, we could

find the extrinsic and intrinsic factors that help in assessing the service quality. The

intrinsic factors namely: belief, trust, safety, convenience, and confidence and extrin-

sic factors namely: cleanliness, facilities, access, and service delivery prove helpful in

service quality assessment. Practitioners and policymakers can adapt this study to

increase performance and deliver patient-centered services.

KEYWORDS

health care, patient experiential management, public health, service quality

1|INTRODUCTION

Today nothing in the world stands isolated. Global health focuses on

issues that impact health directly or indirectly that can transcend

national boundaries. International health focuses on other than one's

own country, especially those of low-income and middle-income, and

developing nations. With global pandemic across the world, we realize

how improved health has many benefits both for nation and individ-

ual. Both developed and developing countries have different chal-

lenges regarding providing quality healthcare. Still, provision of access

to health monitoring and assessment technologies to people with lim-

ited or non-availability of healthcare facilities remains a common goal.

All service providers must give quality and satisfactory deliverables to

their consumers in present days. The need of the consumers over time

has changed tremendously. Thus the present-day receivers are more

consumer-centric in their approach (Kim et al., 2012). This has contin-

uously challenged providers to better themselves in every aspect pos-

sible and make sure to deliver to the benefit of the consumers,

pushing the providers to achieve sustainable competitive advantage in

their deliverables (Cheah et al., 2018). Competition exists in the

healthcare sector, and thus customer satisfaction plays a vital role

(Raju & Lonial, 2002). In healthcare services, especially in developing

countries, the providers need to ensure that consumers/patients feel

satisfied at the end, as a satisfied consumer gives more revenue.

Indian healthcare industry overages served its consumers through pri-

vate and public health systems (i.e., government hospitals, research

Received: 29 January 2021 Revised: 1 October 2021 Accepted: 24 November 2021

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2800

J Public Affairs. 2022;22(Suppl. 1):e2800. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1of15

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2800