Do Appealing Hospital Rooms Increase Patient Evaluations Of Physicians, Nurses, And Hospital Services?

2003 | Health Care Management Review
Volume 28 Issue 3 Pages 254-264
Authors Swan, JE, & Richardson, LD, & Hutton, JD

Key Concepts/Context:

There is a trend to move healthcare towards hospitality, and create more appealing and less institutional environments. A key driver, not exclusive to the healthcare industry, is that physical surroundings can influence customer judgments of service performance including customer satisfaction, loyalty, favorable word of mouth, recommendations and service quality perceptions. In the context of healthcare although various studies have addressed the importance of the physical environment with respect to favorable health outcomes, few have established a correlation between physical appeal and perception of service quality. Furthermore the extent to which appealing hospital rooms as a type of physical facilities will positively influence hospital patient evaluations of physicians and nurses and hospital services is not known. In this article author investigate this question by comparing patients’ perception of servie quality in two types of rooms, a typical room and renovated hotel-type rooms, within the same hospital system.
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