Ophthalmology Practice-Related Factors and Patient Loyalty: Mediating Role of Patient Satisfaction.

Background: In the current period, competition among the healthcare sector has increased and healthcare providers try to get loyalty and satisfy the patients by establishing different strategies.

Purpose: : This current study aims to discover ophthalmology practice-related factors and patient loyalty and to analyze the mediating role of patient satisfaction in private ophthalmology services in various private centers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Methods: : The nature of the study is quantitative, and data is collected with a questionnaire. We used a pre-tested questionnaire that was divided into different sections assessing ophthalmology practice-related factors, patient satisfaction, and patient loyalty. These were measured using a 5-point Likert scale, focusing on financial aspects, access to facilities, staff services, and ophthalmologist services. Further, the smartPLS technique was used to extract the results by using SmartPLS.

Results: : The analysis sample size consisted of 323 participants from Saudi Arabia. The results found that ophthalmologist service has a positive relationship with patient satisfaction (= 0.369, p = 0.000) as well as patient loyalty (= 0.234, p = 0.004), but there are some ophthalmology practice-related factors such as financial aspects, access and facilities, and staff service, which showed no relationship with patient loyalty but a positive relationship with patient satisfaction. Further analysis found that patient satisfaction as a mediator has a positive relationship between ophthalmology practice-related factors, namely, ophthalmologist service (= 0.228, P= 0.000), financial aspects (= 0.102, p = 0.019), access and facilities (= 0.109, p =0.000), and staff service (= 0.188, p = 0.000) with patient loyalty.

Conclusion: : The present study findings reveal the importance of focused patient satisfaction improvements in enhancing patient loyalty within ophthalmological clinic settings in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, we recommend future exploratory prospective research to find the satisfaction and loyalty factors that change over a period of time.