Institutional Quality as a Structuring Dimension of Hospital Service Quality: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

More and more, people are realizing that institutional quality is an important part of hospital service quality, along with technical and interpersonal aspects. There is a layer of governance, a layer of reputation, a layer of internal coordination that are affecting how patients think about the quality of care that they're receiving. On August 1, 2025, we conducted a bibliometric review through Scopus, following PRISMA guidelines. Peer-reviewed articles were filtered for future publications in English and French between 2004 and 2024. We used VOSviewer to make and show citation networks (authors, countries, journals, and keywords). There were 3723 records, and 760 of them were articles. There are three phases in publication trends: emergence (2004-2008), stabilization (2009-2016), and fluctuations (2017-2024) with recovery after the pandemic. The US is the leader in output and collaborations, followed by the UK, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. There were four groups found: governance and organization, patient experience, clinical performance, and institutional assurance (such as accreditation and Electronic Medical Record). Although biomedical research is the primary field, interdisciplinary collaboration is common. These findings further support the notion that institutional quality mediates the relationship between governance, patient experience and clinical performance. It follows a similar line as Donabedian, SERVQUAL, and institutional theory. Hospital quality models should always include institutional quality. Future studies should look at different geographic and linguistic settings and test hierarchical models that connect reputation, governance, accreditation, trust, and perceived quality.

Classification JEL: I1841

Paper type: Theoretical Research