Understanding the drivers of patient satisfaction with home health care services: An empirical study of two care pathways

This research aims to empirically determine the drivers of patient satisfaction with home health care services and to develop an instrument for measuring patient satisfaction in this context. The empirical study focuses on insulin and respiratory assistance therapies. Two large patient samples of a private home care provider in France are surveyed. Two distinct, yet complementary, analytical procedures are performed to maximize the validity and reliability of the results. We identify four core concepts (interpersonal relationship, support and guidance, delivery of consumables, and equipment use) that play a key role in influencing patient satisfaction across the two therapies studied. The results also reveal that the relative role of each factor in driving overall patient satisfaction varies across these therapies, possibly due to differences in the characteristics of the therapies and related care services. Our empirical results enrich the existing literature, largely focused on hospital and primary care settings, by providing evidence to capture patient satisfaction drivers at the level of specificity required to account for the unique context of home care services. The article's main theoretical contribution is to establish, from the patient's perspective, a core set of drivers that determine patient satisfaction in the context of home health care services. The instrument provides practitioners and policy makers with a practical tool that supports them in achieving patient satisfaction and in understanding why and how such satisfaction is achieved. The suitability of the patient satisfaction instrument to other forms of home care services needs examining.