Clinical governance, corporate social responsibility, health service quality, and brand equity

Abstract

Purpose – Brand equity of hospitals is built on patient care service quality. Through the testing of the hypotheses on the relationships between brand equity and its precursors, the purpose of this paper is to examine if clinical governance effectiveness is driven by corporate social responsibility (CSR), and if clinical governance effectiveness influences patient care service quality which in turn influences brand equity. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 417 responses in completed form returned from self-administered structured questionnaires relayed to 835 clinical staff members underwent the structural equation modeling-based analysis. Findings – CSR, as the data divulges, is a strong predictor of clinical governance effectiveness which yields high patient care quality and brand equity of the hospital. Originality/value – The expedition to test research hypotheses constructed layer by layer of CSR-based model of hospital brand equity in which high levels of CSR among clinical members in the hospital activates clinical governance mechanism, without which, initiatives to improve patient care service quality may not be successfully implemented to augment brand equity of Vietnam-based hospitals.