RESEARCH ARTICLE
Predicting the Potential Patients' Intention to Select Healthcare Service Providers: Application of Structural Equation Modeling Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior
Peivand Bastani1, 2, Mahnaz Javanbakht1, 3, Ramin Ravangard1, 2, *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2019Volume: 12
First Page: 472
Last Page: 481
Publisher ID: TOPHJ-12-472
DOI: 10.2174/1874944501912010472
Article History:
Received Date: 01/07/2019Revision Received Date: 01/10/2019
Acceptance Date: 29/10/2019
Electronic publication date: 16/12/2019
Collection year: 2019
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Today, patients are more sensitive in selecting healthcare services than the past, and are more engaged in their healthcare process. Also, the characteristics of each health service provider are likely to affect the patients' behavior or intention to behave in selecting service providers.
Objective:
To predict the intention of employees working at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (SUMS), as potential patients, to select health service providers.
Methods:
This cross-sectional applied study was carried out among 330 employees of various SUMS' sub-centers in 2016 using structural equation modeling (SEM). A standard questionnaire designed based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) was used for collecting the required data. The collected data were analyzed by Warp-PLS 5.0 software.
Results:
The results of the model fitness in the public, private and charity sectors showed that these models were well fitted and the greatest associations were between the attitude towards the behavior and intention, the perceived behavioral control and intention, and also between the perceived behavioral control and intention in the studied sectors.
Conclusion:
It seems that the positive attitude of the employees leads to their increased intention of selecting the public sector. In this regard, the University was recommended to take action to build trust among its employees and to create an atmosphere of empathy and respect in order to facilitate employees' use of services.
