Analysis on inpatients’ perceived process quality, satisfaction and loyalty to the private hospitals in China based Structural Equation Model

Objective. To evaluate inpatients’ satisfaction and loyalty to private hospitals and identify the relationship among patients’ perceived quality, satisfaction and loyalty. Methods. Using self-designed questionnaire (see Supplementary File 1), a cross-sectional survey about 2066 inpatients in 9 hospitals in China was conducted from October 20 to 23, 2024. The Nominalized Path Coefficient (NPC) was calculated by the Structural Equation Model (SEM) testing to identify the correlation between different indicators based on the software IBM SPSS 22. 0 and AMOS 22. 0. Results. The satisfaction and loyalty of inpatients with basic medical insurance for urban employees was significantly higher than any other person(P<0.05). Three dimensions of perceived quality, including hospital environment (NPC=0.418), medical effect (NPC=-0.937), and the communication between health technicians and inpatients(NPC=1.490), identified by SEM methods (P<0.001), had significant influence on inpatient satisfaction and affected inpatients’ loyalty taking the satisfaction as an intermediary. In addition, the communication had impact on hospital environment (NPC=0.906), and services efficiency (NPC=0.978). No significance was statistically found between patient satisfaction and medical efficiency (P>0.01). Conclusion. Great efforts should be made to improve the communication level between hospital technicians and patients in private hospitals so as to improve patients’ satisfaction and loyalty, in addition to improving the effectiveness of medical services