When the customer is the patient: Lessons from healthcare research on patient satisfaction and service quality ratings

As customer satisfaction and service quality have become increasingly important, management scholars have developed an impressive body of research regarding their antecedents. However, important gaps remain regarding satisfaction in diverse populations, better specifying practices and mechanisms, and the forms and effects of co-production practices. Oft-overlooked health services research on patient satisfaction and experience provides evidence of how the sector manages the extreme complexity, co-production, and intangibility of health care delivery where the financial and human consequences of low quality are high. Consequently, health care organizations, out of necessity, have developed specific practices to manage complexity and diversity (cultural competence and relational work systems), intangibility (compassion practices), and co-production (patient-centered care) to customize care and improve patient satisfaction and service quality. We also discuss the interpersonal processes (e.g., empathic communication) by which they do so. Then, we briefly explore unique temporal dynamics of care delivery and its measurement over time, and conclude with implications for future research on customer satisfaction and service quality (e.g., novel practices in health care as natural experiments) and patient satisfaction and service quality (e.g., building on management research to examine the effects of leadership, service climate, and emotional labor).