Abstract:

As direct consequence of last several years of liberalization and privatization of medical services sector in Romania a large number of local and /or foreign providers have entered on this market, taking advantage of its significant potential. Market attractiveness was consisting of the population distrust into the public system, which is founded on social, moral and economic realities. Factors such as fierce competition on medical services market, demographic and social changes, medical technology advancements and new perspective of enterprises towards healthcare were enabling emerging of a new customer type- collective customer (Rădulescu, 2008). Moreover, these factors determined medical services providers to become more preoccupied with regaining patients that were not using their services anymore, increasing retention and building loyalty of current customers and nonetheless attracting new medical services beneficiaries. Present paper seeks to lay foundation for future research, tailored for measuring customer/patients satisfaction degree for public and private medical services in Romania.