Time does not heal all wounds. Patients report lower satisfaction levels as time goes by.

Tracking patient satisfaction over time is an effective way to learn about patient perceptions and can also help draw attention to service areas that need improvement. This research compared patient satisfaction levels immediately following hospital discharge and then again two years later. Both overall satisfaction and satisfaction with particular attributes tended to decrease over time. These findings raise questions about the long-term stability of satisfaction ratings and have implications for the timing of satisfaction surveys.

The role of complaint management in the service recovery process.

BACKGROUND: Patient satisfaction and retention can be influenced by the development of an effective service recovery program that can identify complaints and remedy failure points in the service system. Patient complaints provide organizations with an opportunity to resolve unsatisfactory situations and to track complaint data for quality improvement purposes. SERVICE RECOVERY: Service recovery is an important and effective customer retention tool. One way an organization can ensure repeat business is by developing a strong customer service program that includes service recovery as an essential component. The concept of service recovery involves the service provider taking responsive action to "recover" lost or dissatisfied customers and convert them into satisfied customers. Service recovery has proven to be cost-effective in other service industries. THE COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT PROCESS: The complaint management process involves six steps that organizations can use to influence effective service recovery: (1) encourage complaints as a quality improvement tool; (2) establish a team of representatives to handle complaints; (3) resolve customer problems quickly and effectively; (4) develop a complaint database; (5) commit to identifying failure points in the service system; and (6) track trends and use information to improve service processes. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS: Customer retention is enhanced when an organization can reclaim disgruntled patients through the development of effective service recovery programs. Health care organizations can become more customer oriented by taking advantage of the information provided by patient complaints, increasing patient satisfaction and retention in the process.

Sources of referral information: a marketing analysis of physician behavior.

The referral process is an important means of obtaining patients and it is necessary to determine ways of influencing the referral process to increase the patient base. This article reports research based on a survey of the referral habits of 806 primary care physicians. The results are examined in the context of physician receptivity to marketer-controlled versus health services sources of referral information.

Utilization of information sources by the elderly: an empirical investigation.

The behavioral patterns of the elderly population as they relate to the process of obtaining information on services such as health care are not currently well understood. The research reported in this paper examines information usage behavior of the elderly based on a survey consisting of 1060 personal interviews. An examination is made of the sources of information for health care services utilized by the elderly based on demographics and behavioral dimensions.

Challenges and opportunities for personal selling.

Health care organizations are beginning to use sales forces in much the same way as traditional for-profit organizations have used selling programs in the past. However, numerous challenges to the implementation of selling in the health care industry have yet to be overcome. The authors report viewpoints expressed by administrators in a national survey of health care organizations.

Health care seeking behavior of the elderly: an empirical investigation.

The elderly population represents an increasingly large market for health care services and has typically been seen as a homogeneous market segment. This research indicates that the elderly market is in fact a very heterogeneous market which can be segmented by demographic and behavioral characteristics.

Personal selling in health care organizations: a status report.

The authors report the state of the art of personal selling in health care organizations in the United States. The research was conducted through the use of a previously validated sales orientation index, administered to various types of health care organizations. The findings indicate that personal selling is far from being a fully integrated promotional tool in the health care industry. Differences in the sales orientation of health care organizations are found to be related to environmental and organizational factors.

Attributes and perceived benefits of women's health care services.

To protect against declining admission rates and revenues, many hospitals are introducing innovative services to attract patients and physicians to their facilities. Women's health programs have been developed and offered in many markets consistent with this need. This paper examines the actions that hospitals have taken to date, and compares them to the attributes that have been cited in the literature that are seen to influence patient choice. The paper provides a framework which can be used to more effectively define and target programs of this type.

Managing marketing's return in health care.

Marketing in the health care environment has seen dramatic changes in recent years that include greater emphasis on measuring effectiveness. This paper has presented a review of the phenomenon and has discussed methods to measure and monitor the performance of the marketing effort. Research has been suggested to measure this relationship as an initial step in this area.