Evaluating the Situation of Service Quality Based on Patient Relationship Management Approach

Increasing in the number of healthcare service centers enhances the competition in attracting patients in a way that hospitals apply models to attract more patients considering this issue. Nowadays, in order to increase patient's satisfaction, hospitals need intimate relationships and patient relationship management (PRM) besides offering favorite services and healthy environment. The purpose of this study is to evaluate service quality based on patient relationship management in Mortaz private hospital. This study is survey from the aspect of research strategy and is descriptive-exploratory from the aspect of research purpose. Hospitalized patients in Mortaz hospital form the statistical population of the research, which 192 persons are selected among them as the statistical sample based on Cochran's formula. Since no research has been performed about patient relationship management already, the instrument for evaluating PRM is a questionnaire which is made by authors with five points Likert scale (from so weak to so strong). The validity of the questionnaire is confirmed with factor analysis and the reliability of the instrument is verified with Cronbach's alpha. The results showed that this hospital is acting below than expecting level in all dimensions except the dimension of customer focusing. Among the 41 investigated components, this hospital has unfavorable situation in 16 components. The priority of checking them is determined by importance-performance matrix. It seems that it is better for this hospital to put its priorities on "understanding patient's key needs in a correct way", "changing in hospital services for patient's more benefits", "using patient's opinions in designing services", "hospital management and employee's flexibility in offering new services", "understanding patient's information precisely", and "making precise feedback system" regarding the limits in its resources and attempts to upgrading its service quality.