The Effect of Social Media and Service Facilities on Patients' Decisions to Choose Outpatient Services at a Regional Public Hospital

Abstract

The development of information technology requires hospitals to optimise their communication strategies and the quality of their service facilities in order to strengthen patients' decisions. This study examines the effect of social media and service facilities on patients' decisions to choose outpatient services at Demang Sepulau Raya Regional General Hospital, Central Lampung. A quantitative explanatory design was applied through a survey of 117 outpatients selected by accidental sampling, with the sample size determined using the rule of thumb for multivariate analysis. Data were collected using a Likert-scale questionnaire that was tested for validity and reliability, and were analysed using multiple linear regression in SPSS. The results show that social media and service facilities jointly have a strong, positive, and significant effect on patients' decisions, explaining 76.3 percent of the variance. In the joint model, however, the individual coefficients of the two predictors are not statistically significant, a pattern attributable to multicollinearity arising from the strong correlation between the two variables, even though each is strongly associated with patients' decisions at the bivariate level. These findings indicate that easy access to information and comfortable, high-quality facilities operate together to shape patients' decisions. Hospital management is therefore advised to integrate responsive social-media communication with continuous improvement of service facilities to enhance trust and competitiveness.