Comparison of Quality Gap of Physiotherapy Services in Public and Private Centers in Zahedan City Using SERVQUAL Model (Iran)

In order to provide better services in physiotherapy centers, factors such as awareness of perception and expectations of service recipients, determination of the gap between these two categories, plays a very important role. This study was conducted with the objective of evaluating the quality of physiotherapy services provided in public and private physiotherapy centers of Zahedan city using SERVQUAL model.
In this analytical cross-sectional study, 480 individuals referred to public and private physiotherapy clinics of Zahedan city in 2015, were selected using stratified random sampling method. Data were collected using SERVQUAL standard questionnaie. Data were analyzed by Wilcoxon, Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, and Spearman correlation coefficient tests.
There was a negative quality gap in all five dimensions of quality of services (including tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) provided in both public and private centers. The highest mean quality gap in public clinic was in the tangibility or physical domain (-0.53±0.36) and in private clinic was in empathy domain (-0.47±0.39), and the lowest mean quality gap in both public and private clinics, was in assurance domain. There was no sinnificant relationship between age, sex, and education level with quality gap in both public and private clinics (p>0.05).
The clients’ expectations in all domains of quality of services was higher than their perceptions. Therefore, it is required to improve quality of services in all domains both private and public physiotherapy clinic.