The quality of hospital services in Kashan educational hospitals during 2008-9: the patient's viewpoint

The main mission of any hospital in a health care system is to promote care quality for patients and to meet their needs and expectations. The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of hospital services from the viewpoint of patients admitted to Kashan educational hospitals. In this cross-sectional study, 390 patients admitted to Kashan educational hospitals were selected based on the stratified sampling and their points of view were evaluated using SERVQUAL questionnaire during 2008-9. The quality attributes of the questionnaire consisted of seven dimensions (e.g. physician's empathy, physician's availability, the reliability of physician performance, nurse's responsibility, nurse's empathy, drugs management and tangibility of services). Validity and reliability of the questionnaire were confirmed using content validity and Cronbach's alpha coefficient (0.93), respectively. The data were analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests. The mean age of the respondents was 45.72±18.36 years and 54.1% of subjects were men. There was a significant difference among the mean of seven dimension scores and the total quality dimension. Moreover, a significant difference was observed in the quality score mean of different dimensions among hospitals. The highest and lowest means of quality score were for physician's empathy (3.97±0.75) and tangibility of the services (3.76±0.58), respectively. From the patient's viewpoint, educational hospitals have made good progress in providing hospital services; however, different quality scores among quality dimensions in any hospital signify that the health care administrators should pay more attention on the quality improvement programs to improve patient's satisfaction.