A model to measure and evaluate the quality of service of healthcare systems in a gynecological clinic : A Case Study

Abstract: In today’s world, there is a strong competition between companies. In this competition environment, it is accepted that one of the most important elements is quality for companies to be differentiated. The company which can produce high quality products or high quality services can survive in this competition. Nevertheless, the situations of being high quality or low quality depends on the tolerance limits which are determined by customers and it can be changed from person to person. In today’s world, even though, when quality concept is considered, the first thing that comes to the minds is “the quality of products”, the fact of quality is not important for only manufacturing companies but also service companies. To be able to comprehend that if the products or the services which are provided by the company satisfy the customers’ needs, the quality should be measured. Nevertheless, when the process of measuring the quality is carried out by experiments, observations and tangible data in the manufacturing companies, there is no tangible data in the service companies to measure the quality. That’s why there are many different models and qualitative approaches that are developed to be able to measure the quality in service companies. In the scope of this thesis, a model has been developed to measure the current quality and evaluate the perceived quality of a healthcare company. Developed model is consisted of two main parts which are functional quality and technical quality. Besides, for determining the perceived quality, socio-demographic attributes are also considered. To be able to implement the functional quality part of the model, a survey has been created about the clinic and it has been sent to the patients. And the data about the perceived quality has been gathered from the patients. To be able to implement the technical quality part of the model, interviews with the staff of the clinic have been made and the studies to improve the perceived quality of the clinic, permissions and certificates are identified. Developed model has been tested in the case company and it has been found acceptable. The model ensures to measure the current service quality of the clinic and unveils the areas which cause the low quality in the clinic. Thus, the spots that need to be improved are identified.