Factors Affecting Customer Satisfaction in Public Hospitals in Kisumu Municipality

Abstract

The health care industry requires advocating for regular improvement of the “redesigning” of “customer needs” in order to maintain the good relationship of service quality and patients’ overall satisfaction. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that influenced customer satisfaction at the Kisumu District Hospital and the New Nyanza Provincial Hospital, all located in Kisumu Municipality. In particular, it sought to establish, from the patients’ perspectives, whether the hospitals ensured satisfaction through time taken to attend to the patients, employees’ abilities and attitude, adoption of IT, hospital ambience, costing of services, and in-patient services. Towards achieving this, the study adopted a survey research design targeting data from a total of 1450 patients from the two selected public hospitals. The primary data was collected from 114 participants using researcher administered questionnaires, and thereafter analyzed using descriptive statistics. The statistics were generated with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 software. Based on the findings, the study recommends that strict MOH guidance requiring all medical facilities to adopt speedy responses to patient needs is designed and an oversight body empowered to oversee its implementation. The study further recommends to the hospitals’ management to seek partner support towards converting all work spots to IT compliance platforms not only to enhance efficiency and effectiveness, but also to portray a quality perspective to the visiting customers. Finally, if possible the hospitals’ management should re-evaluate their costing.