Rating healthcare services: consumer satisfaction vs. health system performance

ABSTRACT

The complex healthcare services and the consumer’s lack of technical knowledge to assess them engender a debate over using consumer satisfaction ratings as a quality-of-care marker. This paper aims firstly to investigate the effect of socio-demographic, socio-economic and spatial characteristics on the perception of quality of healthcare and secondly to evaluate the relationship between consumer satisfaction and health system performance. Reporting a Eurobarometer survey and the scores of the Euro Health Consumer Index, the finding is that some socio-demographic groups are more likely to get unsatisfied with healthcare services than others (e.g. women, those over 24 years old, those who self-define themselves as working class). Moreover, a strong relationship is revealed between consumer satisfaction and health system performance. The higher the performance of a health system, the higher the propensity to have consumers with positive perception of the healthcare services (satisfied consumers). The implications of the findings are then discussed.

摘要

复杂的医疗保健服务和消费者缺乏技术知识来评估这些服务, 引发了一场关于使用消费者满意度评级作为医疗质量指标的争论。本文首先研究社会人口学、社会经济和空间特征对医疗质量感知的影响，然后评估了消费者满意度与医疗系统绩效之间的关系。通过报告欧洲民意调查和欧洲健康消费者指数的得分，发现一些社会群体比其他人更有可能不满意医疗保健服务（例如，女性，24岁以上，自己定义为工人阶级的群体）。此外研究发现，消费者满意度和医疗系统绩效之间存在着密切的关系。医疗系统的绩效越高，消费者对医疗服务（满意的消费者）正面认知的倾向就越高。这些研究结果的含义也随后进行了讨论。

KEYWORDS:

• Healthcare services
• healthcare quality
• consumer satisfaction
• health system performance
• Europe

关键词:

• 医疗保健服务
• 医疗保健质量
• 消费者满意度
• 医疗系统绩效
• 欧洲

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.