Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between patients' service quality perceptions and their attitudes towards visiting the same healthcare provider again.
Design/methodology/approach: All patients visiting one of 121 (public) primary healthcare centres in a Swedish region between January and March 2005, who were 16 years or older and capable of communicating, were invited to participate. Responses were obtained from 22,170 patients (75 per cent response rate). Patients evaluated service quality using the "Quality from the Patient's Perspective" (QPP; modified short version) questionnaire. Potentially confounding variables such as age, sex, educational level, illness and self-reported health condition were also assessed. Data were analysed through generalised linear mixed effects model analysis and multiple regression analysis respectively, using both individual- and organisational-level (primary healthcare centre) data.
Findings: Approximately 10 per cent hesitated about continuing to visit the same care provider. Favourable service quality evaluations made a statistically significant contribution to the odds of reporting no hesitation about re-visiting the same primary healthcare centre.
Originality/value: Patients' care experiences appear to have an effect on post-care-episode attitudes (and possibly behaviours). It is suggested that effects on care-proximal aspects, such as hesitation about visiting the same provider again, could be an important link to more distal phenomena such as general health status.