The Quality of Maternal and Child Health Care Services with SERVQUAL Model

In the field of ​​health care, the quality has a special place and understanding the perceptions and expectations of the care recipients of the provided services is very important and the first step to improve the quality of care. Therefore, this study was conducted to examine the quality of mother-child care from perspectives of mothers in the primary health centers of Qom.
In this cross-sectional study, using multi-stage sampling method, 409 mothers referring to health care centers of Qom evaluated the quality of primary health care including family planning, immunization, growth monitoring of children. Demographic information as well as the standard SERVQUAL questionnaire with 22 questions (Quality assessment questionnaire with 5 dimensions of tangibles, assurance, reliability, responsiveness, and empathy) was used for collecting data. Data were analyzed by SPSS 21 with descriptive statistics and ANOVA, T-test and Pearson's correlation coefficient tests at the significant level of less than 0.05.
In all aspects, the quality gap was negative. The highest gap mean was observed in the tangible dimension (-1.59) then empathy (-1.53), accountability (-1.47) reliability (-1.28) and the lowest gap average was assurance (-1.10). In this study the gap between the services quality provided for working women and housewives indicate a significant difference (p>0.001). The education level had a significant relationship with provided services quality gap (p=0.024). Also age has a significant direct correlation with negative gap of quality in all dimensions (p The services quality and its dimensions’ analysis showed that there is a negative gap in service quality and its five dimensions between women's expectations and perceptions of the service recipient. In all cases, their expectations level was beyond perception.