Service Quality Evaluation of

Public Sector Organisation :

Hospitals

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 Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Objectives 4

Methodology and Tools to be used 4

Utility / Scope of the work done 5

Future Directions for the investigation of the problem 6

Bibliography 6

Introduction

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The service sector is one of the fastest growing area in the todays world
economy. People employed by service producing industries (or activities) is
far more than the ones employed by goods producing ones. There is no
doubt that in this kind of scenario the quality of service given and customer
satisfaction become one of the critical strategic issues for both the public as
well as the private sector organisations. The quality of both technical and
functional is becoming the key ingredient for the success of these public
and private organisations. Private sector provides high quality products and
better services to secure the satisfaction and loyalty of their customers for
surviving in long term. On the other hand, due to the absence of this
pressure of survival, the public sector organisations and those operating
under the local government, find it hard to improve customer service.

Public sector organisations have a variety of customers for a variety of

different services. These various groups might have different and
contrasting opinions about the service which have been provided to them.
So it becomes important for these public organisations to seek constant
improvements in customer service. These methods for assessing and
evaluating the customer service should be rigorous, highly adaptable and
suitably sophisticated. The usual approach of assessing the customer
satisfaction level is by asking them directly about the quality of service they
have received as customer is sole judge for that task.

But these surveys for getting insight into customer satisfaction and service
quality can be very expensive in public sector. Also these surveys are
prone to focus on the perception of the service delivery i.e. what does the
customer thinks about the quality of service delivered rather than giving
them the opportunity to express about their expectations about service
quality they sought to receive. It is possible that such surveys might reflect
those service features which are regarded important by authorities of that
organisation and they might not coincide with the priorities of the customer
views.

So, in order to do the right form of feedback with both in term of

expectations and perceptions of service quality, the SERVQUAL model

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developed in 1985 by Parasuraman et al and subsequently refined as a
general methodology for measuring service quality can be the appropriate
mechanism for use in public sector organisations. The SERVQUAL model
measures five dimensions of service quality :-

1. Tangibles The appearance of physical facilities, equipment,

personnel, and communications materials.

2. Reliability The ability to perform the promised service dependably

and accurately.

3. Responsiveness The willingness to help customers and provide

prompt service.

4. Assurance The competence of the system and its credibility in

providing a courteous and secure service.

5. Empathy The approachability, ease of access and effort taken to

understand customers needs.

One of the public sector which could gain highly in improving their quality of
service from the customer feedback is the healthcare sector. Healthcare
quality can be improved by measuring the levels of satisfaction of patients ,
and by discovering what matters to them before, during and after their visit
to any hospital. Patients, in general, receive various services of medical
care and judge the quality of services delivered to them.

A lot is at stake when one approaches a doctor or a hospital , people needs

to be provided with good care and all the facilities they require. What is
really sad is that despite fulfilling all criterias of hospitals and even paying
the huge fee ,patients have to face disappointment . It is imperative that a
system is put in place that does justice to those who spend their lives
earning to avail medical aid.

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Objectives

This study would be done for evaluating the patient's perceptions,

expectations and their opinions for improving the quality of service. Our
primary research would be to show the gap between the patient perception
and expectation of quality of service delivered to them. Also, in order to
make it easy for the people to provide their valuable feedback, we would be
developing a web application where patients can evaluate and see how the
hospitals around them are performing.

Methodology and Tools to be used

To achieve the main objective of this study, we would measure the service
quality, and patients expectations and perceptions using SERVQUAL
dimensions. We planned to measure this gap by designing a questionnaire
using the SERVQUAL dimensions to meet our survey objectives.

We would be using the web service we would develop specifically to record

the feedback wherever possible and if required paper and pencil method
also.
The questionnaire would could comprise of about 23 questions, 11
perception related and 11 expectation related and one open-ended
question regarding any comments patients might have about their visit.
Expectations related question would be rated on three-choice scale as
very important, important and not important. Perception related
questions would be rated on a five point scale as excellent, very good,
good, fair, poor.

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Also, some demographics data related to patients would be collected which
would include their age, sex, number of visit, waiting time for the service
etc. For developing the questionnaire, previously done studies in health
care feedback systems and SERVQUAL model would be referred.

Further analysis will be performed on the statistical data by formulating

hypothesis. These hypotheses will be tested using various tests. Also,
regression analysis of the data will be done.

For developing the web application, we would use the JAVA language.
Angularjs would be for creating the web interface of the application and
MYSQL database would be used for storing the data. Intellij IDE (integrated
development environment) would be used for writing the code.

Utility / Scope of the work done

The SERVQUAL approach assesses the size of each gap of the five
dimensions that are mentioned in the model and their resulting impact on
the imbalance between customers expectations and experiences. The
implications of this approach will be evident. A standard customer feedback
might focus on attitudes of services currently being provided and would
suffer from the drawbacks which we have mentioned earlier. As a
consequence, management may embark on inappropriate courses of
action and initiatives. Analysis of gap between perception and patient
expectations would help in rightly prioritizing the policies, allocating the
funds properly to needed resources and taking right corrective actions.

Malpractices either due to the inefficiency of hospitals or lack of patients or

negligence of hospital staff can come to notice of general public . Keeping
a good record of attention being paid by the hospital towards their patients
is must for a hospital to make a good reputation and get more business.

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Also legal consequences of negligence are high. If a patient or his relatives
are themselves to speak on the attitude of hospitals towards their patients
,it gives motivation to everyone right from ward boys to nurses to doctor to
show their best conduct and make best use of their medical knowledge and
pay perfect attention to each one of their patients.

Future Directions for the investigation of

the problem

In future the above application can be replicated to collect the feedback

from people from different public sector organisations in a more interactive
way which could be a mobile application containing the data related to the
all the government services and offices that are available in a state along
with their relevant information.

This application can become a gateway for people to help in the

governance by provide a constructive feedback. Also, it could help the
government and the authorities who are providing the services to the
people in better evaluation of their performance and required
improvements.

The feedback given by the people can be send to the concerned

departments who can act on the basis of that.

Bibliography

1. Tileng, Marlin Yuvina, Wiranto Herry Utomo, and Rudy Latuperissa.

"Analysis of service quality using servqual method and Importance

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 Performance Analysis (IPA) in population department, Tomohon
City." International Journal of Computer Applications 70.19 (2013).

2. Pakdil, Fatma, and Timothy N. Harwood. "Patient satisfaction in a

preoperative assessment clinic: an analysis using SERVQUAL
dimensions." Total Quality Management & Business Excellence 16.1
(2005): 15-30.

3. Donnelly, Mike, et al. "Measuring service quality in local government:

the SERVQUAL approach." International Journal of Public Sector
Management 8.7 (1995): 15-20.

4. Shieh, Jiunn-I., Hsin-Hung Wu, and Kuan-Kai Huang. "A DEMATEL

method in identifying key success factors of hospital service quality."
Knowledge-Based Systems 23.3 (2010): 277-282.

5. Umath, B., A. K. Marwah, and M. Soni. "Study of service quality of

Indian hospitals using SERVQUAL model Indian." Journal of
Research Paripex 2.3 (2013): 37-39.