Beyond customer satisfaction: designing patient-centred services

Background: Western Countries are looking for more effective models of healthcare delivery, by structuring them around the patients’ needs, in order to minimize the waste of resources and to increase the patients’ quality of life. Nevertheless, looking at the practice, most of the services labeled as “patient-centred” have been designed and implemented without the patients’ direct involvement. Aim/s: The aim of the study is to answer to the following research questions: What is the patients’ use and opinion about services designed without their involvement? Are the patients available and ready to contribute proactively to the design of healthcare services? Which are the drivers that better explain the patients’ proactive participation? Method: We selected two services offered by a General Practitioners’ cooperative to its patients: the definition of a personal care plan and the activation of a call center. We set, validated and distributed a survey to 515 patients. The questions were about: the interviewees’ personal details and background; the use, opinion and satisfaction about the new services; the perceived usefulness with respect to their expectations; the interest and availability to be involved in the service re-organization or improvement. We also collected the eventual patients’ suggestions. Results: Although the two services had been implemented to better respond to the predicted patients’ needs, a substantial misalignment with the patients’ necessities emerges from the data. Around half of the interviewees declared interest toward contributing proactively to the redesign of the service. The more they are satisfied with the service, the more they are keen to participate. The availability is not linked with the patients’ age or educational level. Conclusion: Our study suggests that designing services without the patients’ involvement creates inefficiencies instead of solving them. It shows also that patients are keen to collaborate proactively to the service design or enhancement, regardless of their age and educational qualification. Possible applications or implications: This study provides an interesting contribution about how to maximize the value created in times of resources constraints, since involving patients and designing the services around them is not expensive, and prevents from the inefficiencies related to the implementation of useless services.