Purpose
In contrast to the reflective approach of service quality measurement, this paper aims to propose and validate a parsimonious multidimensional second-order formatively measured model of service quality for primary health-care services provided by hospital outpatient departments. The index’s empirical validity is examined by investigating the strength of its relationship with certain behavioral responses such as patient satisfaction and behavioral intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected through a stratified random sampling from eight hospital outpatient departments in Greece. Covariance-based structural equation modeling techniques were used to validate the proposed service quality index and further investigate its effect on patient satisfaction and behavioral intention.
Findings
The data analysis indicated that the proposed formative index is fully functional with medical care being the factor and mostly contributes to service quality perception, followed by administrative service and staff performance, and facilities condition and nursing care. It, further, confirmed the partial mediating role of satisfaction, as it enhances the high impact of service quality on behavioral intentions.
Research limitations/implications
The relationships among hospital outpatient departments service quality, patient satisfaction and behavioral intentions were validated with data from one country and a health-care system which is state driven and funded.
Practical implications
An understanding of hospital primary health-care service quality formation is important to health-care decision makers because it offers them the opportunity to consider patients’ needs and wants, and takes the appropriate actions for improving the relevant underling procedures in a more efficient manner to achieve favorable behavioral responses.
Originality/value
The paper manages to propose and empirically evaluate a formatively measured approach of service quality and investigate the effects of the proposed index on patient satisfaction and behavioral intention, especially in the hospital outpatient services context in Greece.
Higher education attributes significant interest to student satisfaction because of its potential impact on the quality dimensions of the offered services. This is illustrated from the large number of studies that have shown a moderate to strong relationship between these two concepts. This paper provides a detailed analysis of a student satisfaction survey conducted at the Health Care Management Department of the Technological Education Institute of Athens. The analysis was based on a multi-criteria preference disaggregation method (MUSA). Results are focused on the evaluation of student choices, while significant findings of the applied methodology constitute the determination of strong and weak points of the educational component's preferences that form important suggestions for the improvement of the satisfaction level and the quality characteristics of the correspondent services.
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