Measurement of service quality in health-care sector: Application of servqual method in Celal Bayar University Hospital

Abstract

Today service sector is one of the most developing investment areas. On the otherhand quality is a concept, which is gaining importance since the 2oth century. Variousresearches about quality are available in the literature. Service sector is newlydevelopin Therefore, quality improvement has become important in this sector g. at the end of 20` and at the beginning of 21'' centuries. Today in sectors such as health-care,education, airlines, banking and retailing; the importance of measuring quality for thedevelopment of the sector, has been understood by the top managers and the methodsmeasuring quality has started to be applied. In this study the importance of quality hasbeen mentioned.Service as a concept has started to become important first in USA in 1990 andspread throughout the world. Various definitions are given in the literature on serviceand some of them have become universal and were accepted by most researchers. Lateron. the features of the service conc.e~ hta ve been determined. The service sector has beenaffected by the rise of competition and as a competitive advantage quality improvementhas become essential. Moreover, because of the direct transactions between .pa tients andthe doctors, nurses and personnel, it is more necessary to improve quality in the healthcaresector. In this study the definitions of service concept has been given, application ofsewice quality on service sector has been discussed and quality in health-care sector wasinvestigated.Servqual is a universally accepted service quality measurement instrument. Thisinstrument was first set forth by Parasuraman, Zeithalm and Berry. This methodmeasures quality by subtracting the customers' expectations from their perceptions ofquality after receiving service. Servqual instrument is the main subject of this study.Application of Servqual in various sectors has been examined thoroughly. FinallyServqual was applied in health-care sector. By distribution of questionnaires in CelalBayar University Hospital in Manisa, the question of how well the received servicesatisfies the expectations of patients would be answered.Key Words: SERVQUAL, service sector, quality in service sector, measurement of quality inhealth-care sector.