SERVQUAL model is a measure of service quality. SERVQUAL came into existence in the healthcare field as a result of wanting to understand people’s emotional and practical response to illness and the responsiveness of health providers and systems to their needs. This is crucial, both because it matters hugely to all users of healthcare and has direct influence on the other dimensions of quality (Coulter, Locock, Ziebland & Calabrese, 2014). I believed SERVQUAL is effective in research community it assess the service quality of general businesses. Likewise, it is commonly used to examine healthcare service quality, is useful for calculating the gap between customer/patient expectations and perceptions (Jin, Qian & Zhu, 2013). 27 criteria of hospital services were developed based on Donabedian framework, and then constructed the questionnaire with the 27 criteria based on SERVQUAL model (Jin, Qian & Zhu, 2013). Additionally, 6 major criteria were selected from the 27 measures, based on patients’ and their families’ perspectives. DEMATEL method was used to re-enforce the important use and application of the selected six criteria (Jin, Qian & Zhu, 2013). If modified and approached successfully, SERVQUAL model can be useful in revealing differences between patients’ preferences and their actual experience (Pakdil & Harwood 2005).
Coulter, A., Locock, L., Ziebland, S., & Calabrese, J. (2014). Collecting data on patient experience is not enough: they must be used to improve care. BMJ, 348(26 1), 2225.
Pakdil, F., & Harwood, T. N. (2005). Patient satisfaction in a preoperative assessment clinic: an analysis using SERVQUAL dimensions. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 16(1), 15-30.
Jin, S., Qian, S., & Zhu, H. (2013). Identifying key factors of patient satisfaction based on SERVQUAL and DEMATEL. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology, 48(2), 973-978. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.300.4212&rep=rep1&type=pdf
