Objetive:

When there is a pay per person system and a management model is based on the aim “money follows patient”, patient loyalty becomes a priority for health management. In this framework, we study in which diagnosis and specialties patients become more loyal.

Materials and methods:

Hospitalization and outpatient surgery records from patients of the Region of Valencia (Spain) during 2012 (more than 1 million of records from a database called COMPAS) are considered as secondary data for empirical research.

Results:

Results show that loyalty behavior is different depending on diagnosis and health specialties. At the same time, it is allowed to identify those diagnosis and health specialties where patients are more loyal.

Conclusions:

A different loyalty patient behavior depending on diagnosis and specialties has been identified. In consequence, managers could be able to design their health portfolio in order to get a competitive advantage.

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