The Correlation of Patient's Satisfaction with Service Quality: Presenting a Model Using Structural Equation Modeling

Hospital is the largest and the most important operating unit in the health care system. Therefore, it is important to investigate how the quality of hospitals is evaluated. In this respect, the aim of the present study is to determine the correlation of patient's satisfaction with service quality using Structural Equation Modeling.
This research is a descriptive-correlational study conducted in Kowsar hospital-Astaneh Ashrafieh in 2014. Due to unlimited number of study population, 102 patients were selected by simple randomly sampling method. Through review of the literature, the components of measuring service quality were identified. Data was collected using “Servqual Questionnaire”. The reliability of the questionnaire was measured by Cronbach's alpha. The collected data were analyzed by LISREL software 8.
Results showed a statistically significant correlation between the “guarantee” and the “client's satisfaction”. Moreover, the "guarantee" had a statistically significant correlation with the "level of accountability", "credibility" and "tangible assets", which in turn through "the quality of service" had an indirect correlation with the client's satisfaction.
The findings indicated that in addition to quality of service, the components of "satisfaction" has significant correlation with the elements of the "guarantee". In this respect, in order to improve the quality of hospitals’ service it is recommended that hospitals should take suitable actions to enhance the patients’ satisfaction.