Abstract

The aim of the article. The aim of this article is the presentation of factors, which have an impact on patients when they are choosing services in health care sector.  The results of the analysis. In the article, factors, which have an impact on patients when they are choosing services in health care sector, are presented. The kinds of needs and the characteristic features of medical services, which influence directly on patients are shown in the paper. Presented research of appropriate group of health care centre respondents has shown that the main emphasis they put on the time of waiting for an appointment, doctors’ competences and the staff’s attitude towards patients. Good transport connections and the equipment of health centres are less important. This permits the management to improve the patient services by staff training, which makes the quality of services better, kind and full of empathy treating them. Also it is approved that it would be good if the practice in the health centre became the observation of patients’ and staff’s behaviour which could enable to distinguish appearing needs and possibilities of their fulfilling. The expectations of medical services purchasers are determined. It can be their earlier experience, friends’ opinions and heard information. It is proved that creating of too low level of expectations can make difficulties in encouraging large group of people to buy an offer. Too high level of expectations can make customers dissatisfied. At the same time when companies are concentrated on a customer, their goal of actions and basic success meter is purchaser’s satisfaction, but there should be the balance between the satisfaction level and company profitability. The research highlights also the aspect which is the most visible in the Polish health care system (it is common not only in Poland but in some European countries as well) – the time of waiting for the appointments, mainly with specialists. It is methodological and research article. Conclusions and directions for further research. This research shows the general tendency and some kind of patients’ “whishing” in the case of actions connected with service in health care centres. It can be useful as the point of paying attention to these factors, which can be improved in the health centres, by means of staff’s training, taking care of fulfilling the needs of patients. These needs do not often concern directly the medical services but widely understood the culture of human contacts. This article can be used as the point of departure for following discussion and deepening the knowledge about the customer service.

Keywords: needs, heath care services, patients, patients’s service, time of waiting for doctor appointment

JEL Classification: I10, I11.

Cite as: Krukowska-Miler, A. M. (2015). The factors which have an impact on patients when they are choosing health care centres in Poland . Marketing and Management of Innovations, 3, 182-190. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2015.3-16

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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