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The paper describes a new instrument and method. The study assures relevance, validity and reliability, while being explicitly change-oriented. The authors argue that patient satisfaction is a cumulative construct, summing satisfaction as five different qualities (5Qs): object; processes; infrastructure; interaction and atmosphere.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to describe how quality function deployment (QFD) methodology was employed for translating customer needs and expectations into the quality characteristics in a private healthcare setting. This case study illustrates how an existing approach of SERVQUAL and QFD integration can be applied for quality improvement. Design/methodology/approach -Integrating SERVQUAL into QFD to set the success factors to improve quality in the healthcare industry is the main aim of this paper. A privately-held university hospital, within the city of Istanbul in Turkey, was selected as the sampling frame. A SERVQUAL-type of questionnaire was used and a total of 250 questionnaires were distributed and 210 of them were received. Usable responses were 170, comprising a response rate of 68 percent. Findings -From the results of the QFD application it is seen that behavior and attitude of staff has the highest weight score, meaning that when behavior and attitude of staff is improved there will be almost 25 per cent of improvement in the hospital. Another finding was that there is strong relationship among skills of physician, behavior and attitude of staff, and having enough modern equipment.Research limitations/implications -QFD technique is able to provide hospitals with a better understanding of customers' expectations to translate these expectations into appropriate service specifications and perform existing process assessment. Originality/value -The case study was a first attempt to apply this integrative approach to a service sector and thus offers practical and applied information useful to both academicians and practitioners.

The estimation of a connectional brain template (CBT) integrating a population of brain networks while capturing shared and differential connectional patterns across individuals remains unexplored in gender fingerprinting. This paper presents the first study to estimate gender-specific CBTs using multi-view cortical morphological networks (CMNs) estimated from conventional T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Specifically, each CMN view is derived from a specific cortical attribute (e.g. thickness), encoded in a network quantifying the dissimilarity in morphology between pairs of cortical brain regions. To this aim, we propose Multi-View Clustering and Fusion Network (MVCF-Net), a novel multi-view network fusion method, which can jointly identify consistent and differential clusters of multi-view datasets in order to capture simultaneously similar and distinct connectional traits of samples. Our MVCF-Net method estimates a representative and well-centered CBTs for male and female populations, independently, to eventually identify their fingerprinting regions of interest (ROIs) in four main steps. First, we perform multi-view network clustering model based on manifold optimization which groups CMNs into shared and differential clusters while preserving their alignment across views. Second, for each view, we linearly fuse CMNs belonging to each cluster, producing local CBTs. Third, for each cluster, we non-linearly integrate the local CBTs across views, producing a cluster-specific CBT. Finally, by linearly fusing the cluster-specific centers we estimate a final CBT of the input population. MVCF-Net produced the most centered and representative CBTs for male and female populations and identified the most discriminative ROIs marking gender differences. The most two gender-discriminative ROIs involved the lateral occipital cortex and pars opercularis in the left hemisphere and the middle temporal gyrus and lingual gyrus in the right hemisphere.

PurposeThe aim of this research is to examine the major factors affecting patients' perception of cumulative satisfaction and to address the question whether patients in Istanbul evaluate quality of health care to be similar or different to that of the Kazakhstani, Egyptian and Jordanian patients.Design/methodology/approachA conceptual model including behavioural dimensions of patient‐physician relationships and patient satisfaction has been used for approach. As the empirical research setting, this study concerns people who are or were patients once in Istanbul hospitals.FindingsThe questionnaire was taken from another research regarding Egyptian and Jordanian medical clinics. The same research was also done by the authors in Kazakhstan in 2008. A total of 48 items (attributes) of the newly developed five quality dimensions (5Qs) by the second author were identified to be the most relevant.Practical implicationsThe results of this study can be used by the hospitals to reengineer and redesign creatively their quality management processes and the future direction of their more effective health care quality strategies.Originality/valueA 5Qs model to measure the patients' satisfaction of medical care is proposed as for previous studies for Kazakhstanian, Egyptian and Jordanian hospitals. As mentioned previously the 5Qs model encompasses technical, functional, interaction, infrastructure and the atmosphere qualities and services. The results can be used by the hospitals to reengineer and redesign creatively their quality management processes and the future direction of their more effective health care quality strategies.

Purpose -The aim of this paper is to investigate and define the competitive positioning of banks including state-owned, domestic and foreign banks operating in Istanbul, Turkey. The aim is to check the competitive marketplace and to identify the major quality attributes, which bankers themselves and their customers used in determining the overall perception of a given bank and services offered. Design/methodology/approach -The investigation was held in Istanbul, Turkey. In total, 30 banks were included in the research, which includes state-owned, local and foreign-owned banks. A total of 1,530 questionnaires were submitted, answers collected and analyzed. Reliability test and frequency analysis were used to analyze the data. Findings -From the banks' customers' point of view, determinants relating to functional quality or how the customers wish to receive banking services became evident. It also became clear that customers of banks are not fully receiving what they want or need and their expectations, especially on the most important attributes of quality, are not being met.Research limitations/implications -The survey showed how the banks were selected and including their employees in relation to the other competitors' banks in the Turkish banking industry. Originality/value -The paper demonstrates an integrated technology, use of staff talent and streamlined operations that respond to customer needs and encourage customers to use the whole range of banking products/services rather than only a few as the end game. The results were used by bank staff later on to reengineer and redesign creatively their positioning strategy and the future direction for creating more effective quality strategies.

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