Measuring and Assessing the Healthcare Services Experience: A Proposal of a Synthetic Index

ABSTRACT The evaluation of healthcare services is a crucial aspect of public health management, as it provides insights into service effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction. This paper proposes a multidimensional approach to measuring healthcare service experience by constructing a synthetic index that incorporates three key perceptual dimensions: Cost, accessibility, and quality. These latent constructs are measured using a set of elementary indicators from the European Quality of Life Survey. To develop the dimensional synthetic indices—one for each experience dimension—as well as the overall experience index and the customer satisfaction index, we employ Partial Least Squares Path Modeling (PLS‐PM). This approach not only enables the synthesis of latent variables but also allows for the analysis of structural relationships between them. The results provide a comprehensive framework for assessing healthcare service experiences and offer valuable insights for policymakers and service providers aiming to enhance healthcare quality and accessibility while improving user satisfaction.