Variability in health care services: the role of service employee flexibility

Researchers in services marketing in general, and health services in particular, are increasingly recognising the need for strategies to manage customer variability in the service encounter. The focus of theory and practice to date has been on managing or reducing variability through means such as customer education and tightly controlled service protocols. Growing recognition of the value of co-creation in health care raises the prospect of providers embracing rather than reducing the variability in the service encounter. In this study we investigate how flexibility on the part of service employees can help manage customer variability, and whether this employee flexibility results in favourable outcomes for the patient and the organisation. First, a qualitative study was undertaken to determine the extent of patient variability experienced and how this variability is perceived and managed. Second, a quantitative study, informed by the qualitative phase, was undertaken to test the impact of employee flexibility in a health care service encounter on performance outcomes, namely patient perceived value and patient satisfaction. The results provide support for the conceptual framework, with employee flexibility having a positive relationship with patient satisfaction, partially mediated through the creation of patient perceived value. Managerial and theoretical implications of our findings are discussed.

Chinese abstract不管是普通的服务营销还是专门的医疗服务，研究人员都越来越意识到管理策略的必要性，以管理服务中面对的客户多变性。迄今为止，此领域的理论和实践都侧重于通过客户教育和严格控制的服务协议等方式来管理或降低这种多变性。随着对医疗护理中医患协作重要性认识的不断提高，医疗服务提供商更趋向于欣然接受服务中面对的多变性，而不是想方设法减少多变性。本研究将探讨服务员工的灵活性对管理客户多变性的帮助，以及员工灵活性是否可给患者和医疗机构带来有利结果。首先，本文将进行定性研究分析，确定患者多变性的范围以及对多变性的认识和管理。其次，根据定性分析的结果进行定量分析，验证医疗护理服务中员工灵活性对绩效表现的影响，即患者感知的价值和患者的满意度。研究成果印证了本文提出的概念框架，即员工灵活性可有效提高患者满意度，其中一部分是通过对患者感知价值的介导而实现。本文也阐述了此研究成果对医疗服务管理和理论的指导意义。