Mohammed Akram

7th September, 2019

MGT 5103 - Article Review

Professor

(Service quality in health care setting, 7th September, 2019)

Summary

With regards to specialty, services provided and resource availability, the hospitals
differ from one another across the globe. With the help of scales that gauge the viewpoints of
patients the services provided by hospitals are mostly measured. Thus, there is an urgent need
to come up with a scale that assess hospital service quality in hospitals globally, irrespective
of their nature or proprietorship. Hence, SERVQUAL instrument has been implemented in
order to address this research need, which helps by establishing a service quality
measurement scale. From inpatients and outpatients across various hospitals the data were
obtained, and the scale was created with the help of structural equation modelling.
Afterwards, the formulated scale was then approved by distinguishing service quality gaps,
and classifying the departments that need managerial exercise. As per the findings, all the
dimensions of SERVQUAL are true in the countries of Asia. Reliability, tangibility,
responsiveness, empathy and assurance are the multiple dimensions of SERVQUAL, with
regards to size and quality gap. There is a need for the hospital management to focus upon
each of these areas as the gaps were found to be statistically high. A huge amount of
improvement can be brought about in the hospitals by the health care management,
practitioners and other responsible bodies by focusing upon the identified areas of
improvement. (Koubaa Eleuch A., 2011)

Introduction

In today’s day and age, the main pillar which is being followed by every successful
firm for their strategic planning is ‘consumer focus’. Though, manufacturing firms started the
idea of quality but it also holds its significance regarding service firms equally. It is by now
eminent that the quality services’ provision is meticulously related with additional consumer
contentment of the firms, customer maintenance, customer devotion, fiscal estimates,
productiveness, facility affirmation as well as budgetary presentation. Just like other service
industries, health care is turning out to be very competitive, and also a highly developing
industry globally. Service quality’s focal point in the health care industry is patient
observation. The primary decision-making tool in opting health care services is patient
satisfaction and service quality must satisfy the expectations of customers. (Mohammad
Mosadeghrad, A. 2014)

In order to measure service quality in the service sector, SERVQUAL is mainly used,
which is developed by Parasuraman and others. It is asserted by Aghamolaei and others that,
SERVQUAL can also be used in hospitals with regard to measuring service quality.
Nonetheless, the appropriateness of SERVQUAL should be assessed in various conditions.
Depending upon the cultural, economical and social surroundings, patients from across the
globe have different assumptions and viewpoint of service quality.

Service Quality in the Health Sector

Health services are unique in recognizing new requirements and threats, which occur
on daily basis. The process of finding genuine tools to evaluate service quality is still being
pursued by the academics, doctors, policy makers as well as decision makers of hospital
industry.

Technical quality and functional quality are the significant multiple quality
dimensions of the health care facility. As long as technical quality is concerned then it refers
to the technical preciseness and medical interpretation and methods, on the other hand, how
the health care services are offered to patients are described by the functional quality. In
simple words, technical quality mainly tells ‘what the patients will get’, whereas ‘how the
patients will get it’ is illustrated by the functional quality. Ware and Snyder are of the believe
that, “the patients fail to possess proper knowledge to assess effectively the quality of the
investigative and relaxing involvement method (or) resources needed although technical
quality possess great importance among patients. It becomes difficult on the part of the
patients to assess between caring presentation and the curing presentation of doctors. (Um, K.
and Lau, A, 2018)
 Health care industry is highly influenced by two factors, namely service quality and
patient satisfaction. The brand image and cost-effectiveness of the hospital are impacted by
the viewpoints of patients about hospital facilities. The patients’ loyalties and word-of-mouth
act is decided by the perceived service quality. Health care service staff has been asked to
identify the factors that are crucial in developing the healthcare services considering the
increased patient expectations; this will ultimately lead to patient satisfaction and permit
health care services to lessen the efforts and expenses they spend. In order to gauge the
service quality of health care, the SERVQUAL instrument has been majorly used. (Ali, S.,
Basu, A. Ware, N. 2018)

Ethics Lessons

The main motive of chapter 5 is to provide a framework for inventory management in

a supply chain-focused manufacturing atmosphere. Here, inventory is regarded as to be a big
investment that every single stage of the supply chain needs to obtain. Care is taken to see,
that every stage operates independently to make the supply chain profitable by organizing the
supply chain management is a certain way. This in turn, will make crucial for every phase of
the supply chain to coordinate with one another, and thereby formulate the inventory policy.
Therefore, the healthcare industry by following the important points being discussed in the
chapter can formulate an effective inventory system whose motive is to cut down the total
operating costs.

Chapter 6 discusses about material requirements planning (MRP) production systems,

which is nothing but a computer-based inventory management system primarily developed to
support the production administrators to organize and place orders for products of dependent
demand. With regards to the healthcare industry, all the significant topics discussed related to
MRP, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and others will be of great help to the hospitals’
managements and owners.

Thus, by following the important tools and techniques provided in both the chapters,
healthcare industry can bring about a great development in its overall functioning and cut
down on overall cost.

My Perspective
 The findings of the current research are of significance for hospital managements in
majority of the countries regarding the non-clinical phase of service quality since perceived
quality is a significant measure in impacting patients value perception and, in turn, in
influencing the intention of patients to hospital services. The overall level of service quality
has been improved with the government efforts to minimize its expenditure on health care,
and to develop hospitals using the accreditation act. Majority of the hospitals seem to be
performing a good job in obtaining customer satisfaction with respect to service quality. It
becomes crucial on the part of the administrators to interact with employees on a daily basis
and assess their service experiences in order to improve service quality altogether. Reliability,
tangibles, assurance, responsiveness and empathy being the most relevant factors as per the
viewpoints of patients across globe. However, it cannot be said that these factors apart from
determining the customers’ satisfaction in hospitals can also be taken as the exact
determinants of satisfaction with healthcare industry as a whole. The SERVQUAL has been
regarded as a feasible measuring tool for gauging the service quality within this study.

I believe, some more areas are required to be explored keeping in account the
continuous development of healthcare industry. Furthermore, this research also provides
implications for further research due to the limitation and shortcoming of this study. At the
end, service quality is a primary element in this competitive market, which brings customer
satisfaction. Also, it is important to note that, service satisfaction is a personal frame of mind
and varies from one person to another. The results of the current study can be taken for new
hospital for enhancing patients’ satisfaction and also to get improved rate of return.

References

Mohd Suki, N., (2011), "Do patients' perceptions exceed their expectations in private
healthcare settings?", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 24 No. 1,
pp. 42-56.

Koubaa Eleuch, A. (2011), "Healthcare service quality perception in Japan", International

Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 24 No. 6, pp. 417-429

Um, K. and Lau, A. (2018), "Healthcare service failure: how dissatisfied patients respond to
poor service quality", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 38
No. 5, pp. 1245-1270.
Ali, S., Basu, A. and Ware, N. (2018), "Quality measurement of Indian commercial hospitals
– using a SERVQUAL framework", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 25 No. 3,
pp. 815-837.