Moderating Role of Healthcare Consumerism in Determinning Service Quality_ Evidence from India

Abstract

Global Healthcare industry is growing rapidly due to the increase in the use of technology. Medical tourism and Telemedicine helps globally healthcare industry which provides healthcare consumers to take cost advantage and the efficient healthcare service delivery available in any part of the globe. The access the medical records is provided by the wide spread use of electronic medical records (EMR), personal healthcare records (PHR) and electronic health records (EHR). However, Indian healthcare industry is following the global trends of healthcare industry. Thus there is growth of medical tourism and use of technology like EMR, PHR and EHR. newlineHealthcare consumerism encourages more active participation of healthcare consumers in the care delivery process by the intelligent use of technology. Some studies indicate healthcare consumerism is in existence from 1960 s. Extensive studies on Healthcare consumerism are carried out USA and UK. There are some index like Consumer Health Insights (CHI) , Euro Health Consumer Index and Consumer Quality Index that give insights on healthcare consumerism in USA and UK regularly. Such comprehensive studies on healthcare consumerism are not found in India. newlineTherefore, the above features are identified as research gap. The research gap is addressed by conducting a comprehensive study of healthcare consumerism in India. It measures the healthcare consumerism, hospital brand, ease of treatment, healthcare technology and service quality perception using the existing literature from other countries. The factors are arrived by Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). These factors are used for creating constructs for healthcare consumerism, hospital brand, ease of treatment, healthcare technology and service quality perception.Haye s PROCESS moderation analysis is used to test the hypothesis H1, H1a, H1b and H1c. Pearson coefficient is used to determine the association between the factors. newlineThe study proves that there is a regulating role of healthcare consumerism on the association betwe