کیفیت خدمات بیمارستان درمانی بیماران: یک ارزیابی تجربی Patient-perceived hospital service quality: an empirical assessment

Introduction Healthcare is considered a ‘credence’ good – an offering that consumers will never be able to evaluate owing to deficient medical knowledge (Bloom and Reeve, 1990). Additionally, conceptualising and measuring service quality in a healthcare setting is more important and simultaneously more complex (Taner and Antony, 2006). However, researchers need to come up with ways to measure healthcare service quality, because unless we measure we cannot manage and improve healthcare services (Lohr, 2015). The literature indicates that there is a variability and confusion in how quality is conceptualized and operationalized (Sower et al., 2001). Many researchers attempt to define and conceptualize hospital service quality. Pai and Chary (2013), for example, show that the Parasuraman et al., (1985, 1988) SERVQUAL/modified SERVQUAL questionnaire is conventionally practiced in healthcare. They also pointed out studies where SERVQUAL items have not loaded onto respective dimensions highlighting a five-component structure that is lacking, suggesting a new questionnaire needs developing. New instruments, designed for healthcare setting: PRIVHEALTHQUAL (Ramsaran-Fowdar, 2008) for private and PubHosQual (Aagja and Garg, 2010) for public settings, have emerged. Studies adopting these instruments are scarce because these scales are hospital specific and not a general scale that measures hospital service quality in any hospital context. An instrument that could measure hospital service quality (HSQ) in any hospital settings has gained importance. Pai and Chary (2016) proposed their conceptual framework for measuring hospital service quality using nine dimensions. Their framework, unlike other instruments such as SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al., 1988), PRIVHEALTHQUAL (Ramsaran-Fowdar, 2008) and PubHosQual (Aagja and Garg, 2010) has an additional dimension (relationship) in line with researchers such as Carman (1990) and Reynoso and Moore (1995), who suggested adding service specific dimensions to SERVQUAL, there exists no empirical studies to support or refute their conceptual framework. As there are no research studies that used Pai and Chary’s framework (2016), our purpose is to empirically appraise this framework and addresses literature gaps.