An investigation into customer care practices in public hospitals in Kumasi Metropolis

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Date
August, 2016
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Customer care within the context of healthcare delivery is very broad. The healthcare institution has two forms of customers: The suppliers of goods to the Hospital and the patients and their relatives who seek for healthcare. The World Health Organization focuses on the Patient as the Customer .The World Health Organization (WHO) in 1995 defined Customer care as the process by which a healthcare organization delivers its services or products in a way that allows the customer (patients) to access them in the most efficient, fair, cost effective, and humanly satisfying and pleasurable manner possible. This makes the patient the most important partner in healthcare system. However, this patient - hospital relationship in Ghana is tilted in favour of the healthcare staffs who regard him or herself as more important than the client. The question is does this tilted relationship provides good customer care? The general objective of the study is to investigate customer care practices in public health institutions in Ghana - a case of selected government hospitals in Kumasi Metropolis. The researcher adopted simple random sampling techniques in collecting data from respondents. The respondents consisted of patients and staff in selected public health institutions in Kumasi Metropolis. Data was collected through direct visitation, observation, interviews and questionnaires. A total of 320 people were interviewed in 16 public health hospitals and data collected constituted the primary data. It was shown that most patients were not satisfied with the long waiting times in these hospitals. Patients were however satisfied with the quality of care. It is recommended that more doctors should be trained and retained in these institutions to reduce the long waiting times in the hospitals.
Description
A thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Master of Business Administration,(Marketing and Strategic Management).
Keywords
Citation