Determinants of performance of private hospitals in Nairobi County, Kenya and moderating effect of government regulations

Abstract

Private hospitals seek to ensure their survival by ensuring that they have optimised their performance relative to their rivals. Many private healthcare facilities in Kenya were constrained from managing long-term ailments such as hypertension due to limitations in self-management support, deficiencies in the healthcare literacy, high cost of care, ineffective referral systems, limited care provider training, and deficient regulatory support. The study sought to establish the determinants of performance of private hospitals in Nairobi County, Kenya. Its specific objectives included: to determine the influence of cost efficiency; quality of care, human capital, and technology on the performance of private hospitals in Nairobi County, Kenya. It will also examine the moderating effect of government regulations on the performance of private hospitals in Nairobi County, Kenya. The study was supported by the Evidence Based Management Theory, and the Attribution Theory. A descriptive design was selected for this study since it facilitated the articulation of the attributes of the study participants. The study’s target population was five private hospitals in Nairobi County which comprised the unit of analysis. More specifically, the study involved 200 respondents from the five private hospitals which comprised the study’s unit of observation. The study collected the primary data using questionnaires which was developed from the empirical research and administered to the sample population. It used a five-point Likert scale to enable the development of the questionnaire to use in combination with standard deviation and mean, to further enhance the description of the data. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences was then used to conduct descriptive and inferential analysis. The presentation of the results was captured through the use of graphs and tables. The Pearson Correlation analysis indicated that all the predictor variables were positively and significantly correlated with the outcome variable. The predictor variable that was the strongest correlation with the dependent variable was technology followed by government regulations, cost efficiency, quality of care, and human capital. The regression model demonstrated a good fitness of fit. The ANOVA statistics revealed that there are both significant and statistically significant relationships between the predictor variables and the outcome variable. The study recommended that the Government should ensure adequate participation of all the stakeholders including those in the private healthcare sector in the formulation of policies and standards of healthcare so as to come up with policies that are representative of all possible issues of concern across the board and get the buy-in of all key stakeholders. there are few studies that have addressed the moderating effect of government regulations on the determinants of performance of private hospitals, which is conceptual gap that has been addressed by this study.