Issue 4, 2015

Sheresheva M. Yu., Kostanyan A. A. Client Orientation of Employees in Russian Public Health Care Organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight of the current state of customer orientation in Russian public healthcare organizations, and to present an approach to the development of medical staff skills providing customer satisfaction, based on the synthesis of the concepts of perceived value and the experience economy. The paper examines the priorities and goals for improving customer orientation of medical staff that are implied both by patient and organizational perspectives in Russian healthcare, focusing primarily on the measures introduced by Russian government with the aim to develop more “marketbased” healthcare system. Statistical analysis of primary data in conjunction with secondary sources available was used to describe the amount and quality of trained staff in Moscow region. A pilot survey was conducted in Moscow region public healthcare organizations to test the applicability of the proposed indicators of customer focus in the overall system of the healthcare quality assessment. The analysis shows that human resource capacity is one of the main competitive advantages of the Russian public healthcare organizations. At the same time, they need to better utilize marketing tools to inform consumers and assist their healthcare decisions. This effort needs to be supported by assessment of staff skills and achievements, with the aim to improve quality and increase accessibility of care. Existing indicators of customer focus and quality assessment of medical organizations, proposed by the Russian Ministry of Health, need to be partly corrected. This paper provides support for healthcare managers in Russia. It illustrates that focusing on consumer perceptions is crucial for local healthcare organizations. Still, the exploratory research should be regarded as the first step. Further research is needed to test the proposed system of indicators in quantitative studies or case studies in other regions of Russia. There has been little research on marketing and customer orientation in Russian healthcare. The paper provides evidence of the current state of customer orientation in Russian public healthcare organizations. The existing aggregated monitoring system of healthcare quality is complemented by indicators to measure customer orientation of medical staff. Keywords: client orientation of employees, healthcare, services marketing, healthcare quality, perceived value.

<< Contents: Issue 4, 2015
<< Go to archive