Abstract
Objectives: At Health Examination Center Urasoe General Hospital, customer satisfaction is surveyed twice a year to improve customer service and its operation. In 2013, a new method was introduced using correlation coefficient to efficiently extract the areas that needed improvement.
Subjects: Clients who underwent health examinations at the health center from July 30 through August 5, 2013. Health examinations included physical examination by a physician and health guidance offered by medical staff members.
Methods: Five grade values were used. Higher than “matched expectations” were considered satisfied. The degree of satisfaction in each area was described as ratios of satisfied/valid respondents. For importance, the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (hereinafter referred to as “correlation coefficient”) was used to describe each item and the overall evaluation. The correlation coefficient was calculated by the score given by the choices. When the correlations were statistically significant, those items were considered important to increasing client overall satisfaction.
Results: Items that had low satisfaction were the following: (numers shown are t-scores) doctors bedside manner (38.9), clear explanation and guidance by doctors (35.7), waiting time (28.9), fees (41.2). Caluculated importance were as follows: (numbers shown are correlation coefficient) doctors bedside manner (0.624), clear explanation and guidance by doctors (0.664), waiting time (0.685), fees (0.539). All correlations were statistically significant (p<0.01).
Discussion: We interpreted those four items that had low satisfaction scores as important to increasing overall customer satisfaction. To improve business operations we decided to work on the three items in the order of lowest satisfaction. The first to be improved is “waiting time”. The second is “clear explanation and guidance by doctors” followed by “doctors bedside manner.” We will refer the fee feedback to management for further consideration.
