Evaluating and Ranking Service Quality Factors in a Selected Referral Clinic

Hospitals and referral clinics are the most important departments to provide health care services in the health care system. Service quality evaluation is one of the most significant criteria for the performance success of the organization. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and rank the quality of service factors in a selected referral clinic.
A well-known referral clinic has been selected as case study in the research. The data collection tool is based on the standard SERVQUAL questionnaire, which has been customized based on the circumstances and status of the clinic. The Data were analyzed by nonparametric Wilcoxon and Friedman tests. For this purpose, SPSS23 software was applied. In this research, the quality gap was obtained from the difference between expectations and perceptions (E-P).
267 patients were examined in the sample. In each of the six dimensions evaluated in the SERVQUAL questionnaire, there was a significant difference between the mean expectations and the mean of the administrators. The greatest gap was the accessibility dimension (1.41) and the lowest disparity was in empathy dimension (0.86). Based on Friedman test results, patients ranked the accessibility dimension with 4.12 points as the most important dimension and the empathy with 2.90 as the least important dimension.
From the point of view of referring of the selected clinic, there is a significant gap in all dimensions of the service quality of clinic. Therefore, the expectations of the patients were not met by the clinic services. As a result, the clinic needs to improve its services in all of the studied quality dimensions.