Hoteling Service's Quality in Public Hospitals of Iran

Considering the importance of the quality of hospital hoteling services in healthcare system’s outcomes, and lack of a valid assessment method for determining and implementing required strategies for evaluation and improvement of the service quality, the aim of the present study was to determine factors affecting the hoteling services quality in public hospitals of Iran.
The present quantitative-qualitative study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, factors affecting hospitals hoteling services’ quality were extracted from the literature as well as from in-depth interviews with 11 experts (i.e., 6 specialists in healthcare administration and 5 in hoteling industry). In the second phase, the data from the first phase were integrated and a model for improving the quality of hospitals’ hoteling services was designed resulting in a researcher-made questionnaire. The model was validated through qualitative (i.e., expert opinion), and quantitative approaches (i.e., exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis). The data for the factor analysis was collected from 960 patients and specialists in 10 teaching hospitals in 10 different cities across the country. Confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regression were used to analyze the data.
The findings of present study indicated that 11 factors (physical, functional, economical, human factor, social welfare services, clinical welfare services, safety, cultural, personnel identification, patient guiding factors, and healthcare services) were able to explain 65.81% of the hoteling services’ quality variances. Based on conformity factor analysis, functional and personnel identification factors with a coefficient of 0.953 and 0.779, respectively, had the highest and lowest impact on improvement of the quality of hoteling services in Iranian teaching hospitals.
For the improvement of the hoteling services status of Iranian hospitals and considering the 11 factors found in this study, the functional factor must be emphasized and the technical quality of health services be evaluated in the planning of hoteling services.