ABSTRACT
The development of the performance measurement (PM) field throughout the 1990s, to establish what businesses should measure to improve performance (Neely, 1999;Kaplan and Norton, 1992) coincided with an increased research focus on the need for operational outputs to deliver value to customers, both through the development of the service operations field (Johnston, 1999) and the maturing of the quality movement with initiatives such asTQM and Six Sigma.The results of this research are now considered fundamental to many areas of operations management practice; in that improved quality leads to improved customer satisfaction and that quality can be improved through measuring and monitoring the right things. Within the public services field, there is a significant area of research focused
on service operations in the healthcare sector (Johnston, 2005). However, measuring performance in this sector is recognised as being fraught with difficulties (Gomes et al., 2010). Some of the continuing challenges for PM relate to the measurement of service quality and customer satisfaction, particularly in complex public sector environments where the need for information transparency makes the use of outcome measures more appropriate than process measures (DeGroff et al., 2010). The majority of research in the healthcare sector is focused on large hospital
environments.To date, there is little research looking at general practice (GP), and the issues that arise in this environment, despite the fact that the family doctor is typically the first point of contact for patients and, within the UK at least, is increasingly seen as a ‘gatekeeper’ for further treatment.As such the performance of the doctor has the potential for a high impact on overall patient care and satisfaction. GP surgeries, therefore, offer an interesting lens through which to examine the impact of PM on satisfaction in a public service environment.Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine whether GP performance, as measured by the standardised PM system adopted by the majority of English GP surgeries, is a predictor of patient satisfaction. The rest of the chapter is organised as follows: firstly, there is a discussion of the
relevant literature, to clarify the relationship between PM and satisfaction in the healthcare context. A summary of the way GP surgeries are organised in the UK
follows, including an explanation of the key PM systems used and how they work. The research approach is then presented, along with the data analysis, results and discussion, from which some conclusions and recommendations are drawn.
