This study was conducted to identity the differents in hospital preference according to the type of medical facilities and to evaluate the image of three hospitals ; 'A' hospital is a University general hospital, 'B' hospital is a women's hospital, and 'C' hospital is a public hospital. A questionnaire survey was
conducted from November 5 to November 13, 1990 and data were collected from 171 persons who lived in the defined area.
The results are as follow:
1. The main reason for clinic preference was geographical accessibility ; and preference for a university hospital was influenced by the quality of the medical staff.
2. Among the three hospitals studied, 'A' hospital obtained the highest score for positive image(81.8%), and 'C' hospital obtained the lowest score(49.2%).
3. Among the individual characteristics, occupation and the type of health insurance were statistically significant, while sex, age, education and income were not significant.
4. A discriminant analysis showed that in the 'A' hospital the degree of facilities, name value, hospital size, readiness and familiarity of hospital were statistically significant factors to discriminate the total hospital image as positive or negative. In the 'B' hospital, familiarity of the hospital and aptitude of the medical staff were named, and in the 'C' hospital, cleanliness, name value of the hospital and hospital size were named as significant variables in total image ; the percent of correct classification were 77.3% in the 'A' hospital, 77.6% in the 'B' hospitla and 78.9% in the 'C' hospital.