Healthcare Management : Measuring patient satisfaction of service quality in Swedish dental clinics

Abstract: ABSTRACT:Healthcare management is a field that is related to management, leadership, and service of anorganization. Due to high competition and change in the environment of healthcare organizations,managers need to embrace the innovation to respond to those changes and make the organizationsuccessful by improving the process, structure, and culture of the organization as well as to provideefficient and effective care that will lead to achieve patient satisfaction. Service quality is one ofthe key factor among the service innovations that contribute to business development and leadingposition in the business world with high competition. Patient satisfaction is important for anyhealthcare organization. Patient satisfaction improves hospital/clinic image, which changes into anincrease in the use of services provided by the healthcare systems and increases market share.Patient satisfaction is dependent on the service quality which is the main factor in healthcareinnovations.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand experience levels of the patient satisfaction ofservice quality in Swedish dental clinics, based on the factors affecting dental service quality.Data Sources: Interviews with staff from six clinics in Sweden, 240 patient surveys from twopublic and two private Swedish dental clinic, group interviews with three Swedish dental clinics,Science-Direct, Research Gate, ABI Inform, Google Scholar, Academia.edu.Method: This study is based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis (i.e., mixed methodapproach) and abductive approaches to measure patient satisfaction in Swedish dental clinicsthrough service quality. The problem is analyzed through interviews with the staff in private andpublic dental clinics. The factors affecting the dental service quality are analyzed throughtheoretical and empirical analysis. The patient’s satisfaction was measured by SERVQUAL toolthrough using patients’ survey that consists of 12 questions based on the four factors (tangibility,empathy, responsiveness, and Assurance). Patient survey is conducted in four dental clinics. SPSSwas used to calculate mean and standard deviation for the survey’s result. After analyzing the result,group interviews with clinic 1, clinic 3 and clinic 5 was conducted to understand different valuesin the tool i.e., the value created, value destroyed, and value missed based on the customerperception to analyze the service quality of the dental clinics.Findings: The result from the surveys showed that the factor empathy has highest positive affectand responsiveness has the lowest effect in four dental clinics. The lowest effect in the factorresponsiveness is based on the waiting time to meet a dentist. The group interviews gave us thedifferent values which are based on the idea of the value mapping tool in customer perspective.The value that the clinics gained trust from their patients. The value missed\destroyed is the waitingtime to meet a dentist. The new opportunities are to improve the services by installing newtechnology products and changing the appearance of the clinic.