Abstract
The New Zealand government introduced new reforms in the healthcare sector by shifting focus from a “hospital-centered approach” to a “patient-centered approach.” This move encouraged the healthcare sector to innovate their equipment, methods, and work practices to improve themselves and better serve their patients. This research examines the effect of hospital innovation on patients’ behavioural outcomes, such as levels of satisfaction, word of mouth, and revisit intentions. Additionally, this study sheds light on the mechanism through which hospital innovation influences patients’ behavioural outcomes by introducing two mediators in the model: quality of healthcare services and patients’ perceived value. The study was conducted on people who met the eligibility criteria: being over 18 years old and having received treatment within the last two years from hospitals located in New Zealand. Any candidate who didn’t meet these criteria was eliminated from the study sample. Simple random sampling was used to collect data. The study is quantitative in nature as data from respondents were collected by sending a Likert scale survey questionnaire via email. The response rate of the study was 69.7%, and the sample size after filtering responses for eligibility criteria and treating missing values was 494.
Descriptive statistics were performed using IBM® SPSS® to understand the nature of the study sample. Structural equation modelling was performed in IBM® SPSS® Amos™ to test the research hypotheses. The analysis indicates that hospital innovation has a positive and significant effect on the quality of healthcare services and patients’ perceived value, satisfaction, word of mouth, and revisit intentions. The study also found that the quality of healthcare services significantly affects patients’ perceived value of the services provided at the hospital. Moreover, the study highlights that the quality of healthcare services and patients’ perceived value partially mediate the relationship between hospital innovation and patients’ satisfaction and word of mouth. However, they do not mediate the relationship between hospital innovation and patients’ revisit intentions.
These findings underscore the importance of hospital innovation to enhance service quality, perceived value, and ultimately, patient satisfaction. These findings will facilitate policy makers in making insightful decisions regarding resource allocation and enhancing patient’s positive experience. To generalise the research findings, similar research needs to be conducted in other regions and countries. Future researchers could also elaborate on the current research model by adding other mediators and outcome variables such as patient loyalty, trust, engagement, and the hospital environment. As the New Zealand healthcare system shows disparity in the form of patients’ ethnicities, further studies need to incorporate hospital innovation alongside healthcare equity in their research models.