JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

To deliver effective healthcare services, hospitals need to understand how patients experience service delivery in a holistic way apart from clinical treatment part. Hospitals generally use demographic characteristics of patients like age, gender, education, occupation etc. to design and deliver healthcare services. However, this demographic segmentation may not fully capture how patients perceive care. Patients can also be segmented and understood more meaningfully segmenting based on how they perceive healthcare service quality. It is interesting to study how these new patient segments or profiles differ in satisfaction and behavioural intentions with healthcare service by hospitals.

Objective:

The main objective of this study is to identify perceived service quality based patient segments and study how these segments differ in patient satisfaction and behavioural intention with respect to hospitals’ healthcare services.

Methods:

Cross sectional online survey was conducted in May 2026. This survey was conducted on health care users in Gujarat, India. Questionnaire was circulated in English and Gujarati languages through Google Forms. Total 464 responses were received. 402 respondents who visited hospital in last 6 months were included in further analysis for this study. Patient segments were identified from twenty two perceived hospital service quality indicators. These indicators included five dimensions of service quality namely tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. For inferential statistics, hierarchical cluster analysis was used first to explore cluster solutions and it was then followed by k-means clustering for final cluster solutions. Cluster/segment differences were measured using ANOVA and post hoc tests. Also, demographic differences were tested for comparison with cluster based segmentation.

Results:

A five-cluster solution was retained for managerial usefulness. Analysis classified all 402 respondents into five patient profiles. These profiles were; 1) operationally satisfied but relationally dissatisfied patients (73/402, 18.2%), 2) functionally mixed patients (80/402, 19.9%), 3) highly satisfied patients (59/402, 14.7%), 4) relationally positive but system doubtful patients (88/402, 21.9%) and 5) average patients with limited emotional connection (102/402, 25.4%). Clusters differed significantly with respect to patient satisfaction and behavioural intention. However, demographic variables showed weak or non-significant differences for satisfaction and behavioural intention. Results indicated that patient heterogeneity is better explained through service-quality profiles than through demographic categories.

Conclusions:

Service quality based patient segmentation identified meaningful and actionable patient profiles. These segments also differed in satisfaction and behavioral intention. Results suggest that hospitals can improve patient experience management by targeted management for perceived service deficits rather than relying only on demographics.