Assessment of Quality of Services in Health Centers of Kohdasht, Iran, from the Perspective of Clients

Community health largely depends on the primary health care ‎sector in a country. Health system policies in many countries improve the quality of health ‎care. On the other ‎hand, recognizing customer expectations is the first step in improving the quality of health ‎services. The purpose of this study is to determine the quality of health services from the point ‎of view of clients in the comprehensive health services centers of Kohdasht City, Iran.

This was a descriptive-analytic, cross-sectional study. The statistical population consisted of ‎the visitors to 14 comprehensive health services centers of the city, of which 310 patients were ‎selected randomly. The data were collected using the standard SERVQUAL questionnaire and analyzed by SPSS software.

The service recipients did not assess the average quality of service delivery (‎61.10 out ‎of 140) as appropriate and acceptable. In all six dimensions, the quality of services provided was not acceptable. The most desirable and unfavorable dimensions were the tangbility (12.51 ‏±‏‏ 3.88( and quality accountability‏ (9.81 ‏±‏ 3.50), respectively. Women ‎estimated the quality of service lower than men and city residents lower than rural residents.‏ Age had a significant relationship with the dimensions of accountability and access. There was a significant relationship between income and tangbility dimension and education with tangbility dimensions and reliability.

The results of the study showed that the quality of health services provided by clients was not acceptable. The need to improve quality from different aspects, especially accountability, seems to be essential.