Service quality has been a matter of concern for public and private healthcare institutions across the world. Increased focus on patient-centered care led to several researches in exploring what determines service quality and how can it be measured. The objective of this paper is to explore and summarize the available pool of published knowledge as to understand what comprises healthcare service quality, the underlying dimensions of healthcare service quality, and how it is measured. Literature review, covering significant researches in the field of healthcare service quality, service quality dimensions and its measurement was conducted on EBSCO and Google Scholar databases. Findings were presented in the form of medical and non-medical aspects of healthcare service quality. It can be concluded dimensionality in the healthcare service quality is context specific and patients weigh them differently. Perceptions only measures dominate healthcare quality evaluation over gap score based models. Further, healthcare service quality construct and its measurement has been primarily done from the patient's perspective, however, the provider's perspective of the healthcare service quality has not been taken into consideration.

PurposeHealth care service is a widely researched area. Several established models and instruments measuring health care service quality (HCSQ) are available in the published academic literature. The objective of this article is to summarize this vast pool of available knowledge under the themes of HCSQ, its determinants and measurement strategies.Design/methodology/approachSixty-three available published studies in peer reviewed journal combed in EBSCO and Google Scholar database have been examined and presented in exemplary literature review.FindingsThe findings have been segregated under the themes of HCSQ, its dimensions and determinants. It can be deduced from the findings that in spite of health care being a professional service, the user defined service quality takes center stage.Originality/valueRather than the seeker of care, the authors call for further research by taking a dyadic view of professional exchanges and including providers' perspectives of care in service quality evaluations as well.

Professional services like healthcare operate with high degree of information asymmetry, where usually the seeker of service lacks knowledge and skills, and as a result, they cannot evaluate the benefits. Alternative indicators in the service delivery are sought by the seekers to bring evenness in their evaluation, which might not be reflective of providers’ perspectives of care. This study attempts to explore perspectives of both the participants in healthcare service delivery in multispecialty hospital settings. Semi-structured interviews were conducted using snowball sampling with doctors, paramedical staff and managers in multispecialty hospitals and patients and their attendants who have visited the same set of hospitals during past one year. The narratives of the respondents based on a priori interview themes were converted into textual data. Template analysis technique was used to thematically analyse and present the results. Differing accounts of two participants emerged out of the analysis and a gap between providers’ and seekers’ perspectives of each other’s expectations and perceptions of performance was observed. This study is a novel attempt to simultaneously account for both the participants’ perspectives to present a holistic picture rather than a one-sided view of healthcare service quality.

PurposeThis study integrates the providers' perspective as well as the patient's perspective in developing and validating a scale to measure hospital service quality in multispecialty hospitals.Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory sequential mixed-method approach was used in this study. The strategies used included a thematic literature review, semi-structured interviews, modified Delphi and confirmatory factor analysis.FindingsThe reliability coefficient of 41 item scale was 0.963 with each attribute, that is, pivotal, core and peripheral, having a Cronbach's alpha of 0.907, 0.91 and 0.891, with scale content validity (S-CVI Ave) of 0.9151. The composite reliability scores of all constructs were greater than 0.7, with an Average Variance Explained (AVE) of all items greater than 0.5.Originality/valueThe instrument can be used to measure the difference between what service providers believe customers expect and customers’ actual needs and expectations. The scale can be used to measure the difference between what is delivered (as perceived by the provider) and what customers perceive they have received (because they are unable to accurately evaluate service quality). The dyadic approach of administering this questionnaire in measuring hospital service quality will lead to the identification of a knowledge gap and a perception gap in delivering hospital service quality.