Evaluation and Ranking of Service Quality in Four Public Hospitals in Iran using Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods

Improving the quality of services in hospitals and dealing with the health of people are very important. The aim of the present study is to evaluate and rank the quality of service in four public hospitals in Iran through “Multi-criteria Decision Making Methods” in 2016.
In this descriptive study, a sample of 8 faculty members from both Semnan University and Isfahan University of Medical Science and a random sample of 384 patients from four public hospitals in Isfahan are calculated by using Cochran method with 0.05 error. Two “Pairwise Comparison Questionnaire” and “Decision Matrix Questionnaire” are used to weight the identified criteria and determine the score of each hospital in each criterion, respectively. Cronbach's alpha of the first questionnaire is approved by 10 experts and the second questionnaire by patients. The hospitals are ranked, using two combined 1- Analytical Hierarchy Process and TOPSIS, named AHP-TOPSIS, and 2- Modified Digital Logic and TOPSIS, named MDL-TOPSIS. Data is analyzed by Expert Choice. 11.
Based on considered error level of 5%, results of both AHP-TOPSIS and MDL-TOPSIS methods, with closeness index values of 0.893 and 0.873 indicated that Al Zahra hospital provides the best quality of services.
The Al Zahra hospital has acceptable performance rather than other hospitals. It is suggested that MDL-TOPSIS and AHP-TOPSIS methods be applied to all hospitals in the country in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses so that hospitals recognize their overall status among the other hospitals compared.