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Service Quality Assessment of Hospitals in Asian Context: An Empirical Evidence From Pakistan

Hospitals vary from one another in terms of their specialty, services offered, and resource availability. Their services are widely measured with scales that gauge patients’ perspective. Therefore, there is a need for research to develop a scale that measures hospital service quality in Asian hospit...

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Autores principales: Shafiq, Muhammad, Naeem, Muhammad Azhar, Munawar, Zartasha, Fatima, Iram
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5798721/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28660771
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0046958017714664
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author Shafiq, Muhammad
Naeem, Muhammad Azhar
Munawar, Zartasha
Fatima, Iram
author_facet Shafiq, Muhammad
Naeem, Muhammad Azhar
Munawar, Zartasha
Fatima, Iram
author_sort Shafiq, Muhammad
collection PubMed
description Hospitals vary from one another in terms of their specialty, services offered, and resource availability. Their services are widely measured with scales that gauge patients’ perspective. Therefore, there is a need for research to develop a scale that measures hospital service quality in Asian hospitals, regardless of their nature or ownership. To address this research need, this study adapted the SERVQUAL instrument to develop a service quality measurement scale. Data were collected from inpatients and outpatients at 9 different hospitals, and the scale was developed using structural equation modeling. The developed scale was then validated by identifying service quality gaps and ranking the areas that require managerial effort. The findings indicated that all 5 dimensions of SERVQUAL are valid in Asian countries such as Pakistan, with 13 items retained. Reliability, tangibility, responsiveness, empathy, and assurance were ranked first, second, third, fourth, and fifth, respectively, in terms of the size of the quality gap. The gaps were statistically significant, with values ≤.05; therefore, hospital administrators must focus on each of these areas. By focusing on the identified areas of improvement, health care authorities, managers, practitioners, and decision makers can bring substantial change within hospitals.
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spelling pubmed-57987212018-02-12 Service Quality Assessment of Hospitals in Asian Context: An Empirical Evidence From Pakistan Shafiq, Muhammad Naeem, Muhammad Azhar Munawar, Zartasha Fatima, Iram Inquiry Original Research Hospitals vary from one another in terms of their specialty, services offered, and resource availability. Their services are widely measured with scales that gauge patients’ perspective. Therefore, there is a need for research to develop a scale that measures hospital service quality in Asian hospitals, regardless of their nature or ownership. To address this research need, this study adapted the SERVQUAL instrument to develop a service quality measurement scale. Data were collected from inpatients and outpatients at 9 different hospitals, and the scale was developed using structural equation modeling. The developed scale was then validated by identifying service quality gaps and ranking the areas that require managerial effort. The findings indicated that all 5 dimensions of SERVQUAL are valid in Asian countries such as Pakistan, with 13 items retained. Reliability, tangibility, responsiveness, empathy, and assurance were ranked first, second, third, fourth, and fifth, respectively, in terms of the size of the quality gap. The gaps were statistically significant, with values ≤.05; therefore, hospital administrators must focus on each of these areas. By focusing on the identified areas of improvement, health care authorities, managers, practitioners, and decision makers can bring substantial change within hospitals. SAGE Publications 2017-06-29 /pmc/articles/PMC5798721/ /pubmed/28660771 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0046958017714664 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Original Research
Shafiq, Muhammad
Naeem, Muhammad Azhar
Munawar, Zartasha
Fatima, Iram
Service Quality Assessment of Hospitals in Asian Context: An Empirical Evidence From Pakistan
title Service Quality Assessment of Hospitals in Asian Context: An Empirical Evidence From Pakistan
title_full Service Quality Assessment of Hospitals in Asian Context: An Empirical Evidence From Pakistan
title_fullStr Service Quality Assessment of Hospitals in Asian Context: An Empirical Evidence From Pakistan
title_full_unstemmed Service Quality Assessment of Hospitals in Asian Context: An Empirical Evidence From Pakistan
title_short Service Quality Assessment of Hospitals in Asian Context: An Empirical Evidence From Pakistan
title_sort service quality assessment of hospitals in asian context: an empirical evidence from pakistan
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5798721/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28660771
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0046958017714664
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