Study regarding Customer Perception of Healthcare Service Quality in Romanian Clinics, Based on their Profile

The paper presents the differences in patient perception on healthcare services quality, on a sample of ten Romanian clinics. The global satisfaction evaluation was based on three analyzed variables, namely the perceived competence of physicians, the perceived competence of nurses, and the empathy of the hospital personnel. In a quality-oriented perspective and, at the same time, in a relationship-oriented perspective, these elements were regarded as essential for the way in which the patient, without being fully informed as far as the characteristics of the processes taking place in hospitals are regarded, evaluates, while being in a state of physical and psychical distress, the quality of the healthcare experience they live. Our purpose, while choosing these variables for analysis, was to approach this experience by keeping it as undivided as possible, because it is a latent concept, difficult to measure, and we have to account for the reductionism of the statistical model. The main data processing method is PROXSCAL (multidimensional scaling), in SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences), by which we created proximities from data expressing patient satisfaction, grouping, then, the clinics based on their similarities, as far as patient perceptions on the service quality are concerned. The conclusions of our study serve as an orientation tool on the healthcare services market, by quantifying each clinic’s proximity other, and by outlining the factors which make the patients perceive groups of clinics in similar ways. These factors explain the favourable, or unfavourable perceptions on a certain type of clinics and the general influences on the healthcare sector, in its entirety.