A Study of Medical Service Quality in Hospitals Affiliated to Isfahan's Medical University

Service quality is today one of the most important managerial features of service organizations, and the first strategy of organizations worldwide is to give priority to customers. This research has as its purpose the quality assessment of the services in state hospitals affiliated to Isfahan Medical University. To do this, a number of 336 patients confined to bed for more than 24 hours in those hospitals were randomly selected. The data were collected through questionnaires following servqual (a contraction of servicequality) model which is considered to be among advanced models in measuring quality in governmental sector services. This model tries to measure service quality wherever it is considered as a necessity for better understanding of customers and their expectations. The data were analyzed at descriptive and inferential levels by using SPSS software. The result showed that 82.4% of patients were quite satisfied with hospital services.There was also a meaningful link between service quality and patient's satisfaction (r =-642% for palpability, r =-764% for executive ability, r =-734% for confidence, r =-732% for compassion). Regression analysis results showed that executive ability and palpability could meaningfully foresee 14.7% of hospital's service quality and aspects of service qualitycould be ranged in order of importance as follows: palpability (3.32), compassion (3.22), confidence (3.02), executive ability (2.85), and accountability(2.85). It was also recognized that ICU patients and illiterate patients reported less on the executive quality and accountability respectively.