A Comparison of Public and Private Hospitals - Essay Example

?Service Quality in Health Care: A Comparison of Public and Private Hospitals Contents Contents 1 Introduction 2 Service Quality in the Health Care Industry 2 Conclusion 8 References 9 Service Quality in Health Care: A Comparison of Public and Private Hospitals Introduction Service quality in healthcare is a topic that has been involved in much research. It has been proved from the researches that delivering quality service has significant relationship with customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, customer retention, profitability, costs, and service guarantees (Wong 2002, p.21). There are different patterns that have been developed to measure service quality and how to develop a better understanding of the same. From research service, quality has been defined as conformance to customer specifications. It also defined as the difference between predicted service and perceived service. For better explanation, it is said to be customers’ perception of how well a service exceeds their expectations. The judgment has therefore to be done by the customers and not organizations. Performance of a firm or a business makes it to be different from the other. It is from this ground that customers will be able to judge different performance of different firms. The firm with the best quality must have the best performance as in accordance to the expectations of the customers. Such a firm will have a competitive advantage over the others. Performance will also create loyalty among customers to the extent that they spread favorable word of mouth. There are different tools that are used to measure quality and the widely used is SERVQUAL (Wogalter 2006, p.12). Basing on the understanding of service quality, this will be related with healthcare in private and public hospitals. Service Quality in the Health Care Industry Health care service is usually broken down into two quality dimensions: technical quality and functional quality. Technical quality is defined primarily based on the technical accuracy of the medical diagnoses and procedures (Wisniewski 2005, p.18). On the other hand, functional quality refers to the way the services in the health centers are delivered to the patients. In short, technical quality differs from functional quality in that it is about what customers get while functional quality is how the customers receive the services. From research, it has been established that customers mostly rely on technical quality. It is therefore the best way for customers to establish the quality of services in a health care unit. Only few patients have the knowledge to evaluate effectively the quality of the diagnostic and therapeutic intervention processes. They therefore rely more on interpersonal and environmental factors. The latter factors have been identified by medical professionals as less important factors to consider in establishing service quality. In addition, many customers cannot distinguish between the caring performance and the curing performance of the attendants. From research, it has been concluded that consumers evaluate quality by looking at some functional issues like physical facilities, interactions with receptionists rather than establishing the quality on the grounds of technicality (Sohail 2003, p.17). They do not get interested in the expertise of the professionals but on what they see or experience in the process. There are different tools that are used to undertake a comparison of quality service health care in public and private hospitals. SERVQUAL is the widely used tool. Various researchers revealed their perceptions of customers on private and public hospitals. Some researchers have used simple methods like questionnaires and interviews. What has been observed is that most of the researches have the same results. Three dimensions that have been established on service quality: reliability-confidence, empathy, and tangibles (Ramsuran-Fowdar 2005, p.32). From many researches, it has been established that both the public and private hospitals do not meet the standards of the three dimensions identified. This means that both private and public health care facilities do not meet the quality expectations of majority of their customers. The gap differences for public hospitals are much bigger compared to private hospitals. In public hospitals, the largest gap exists in reliability-confidence dimension. The dimension constitutes from reliability, responsiveness, and assurance access. Private hospitals have better services on the ground of the reliability-confidence dimension meaning that they are more reliable. On the empathy dimension, public health care facilities normally exhibit poor performance. The dimension is about understanding the specific needs of patients and giving individual attention. On the tangibles dimension it is assumed that the equipment does not look modern and the physical facilities are not physically impressive (Lim & Tang 2000, p.13). The huge gaps indicate that there is mismanagement in public hospitals. Public hospitals are expected to have more funds than private hospitals however they are in poor conditions. There are different factors that are said to result to the low quality of services in public hospitals with the major one been the fact that they are non-profitable businesses. Private hospitals are set as profitable businesses meaning that they have to entice consumers. The more they get many consumers, the bigger the profits. This is not the case with the public hospitals since the government operates those (Lee et al. 2000, p.14). A solution to the problem is reorganization of management structure such that health professionals manage the curing aspect while the professional managers manage the caring aspect. In public hospitals, the two aspects are contradicting and they lower the performance. Some professionals will neglect their duties on the grounds of the others. Reorganization in public hospitals can help to reduce some problems thus increasing the quality of their services for customer satisfaction. Private hospitals are perceived as better service providers however there are some gaps in all the three dimensions. The small gaps in the private hospitals can be explained by the incentive structure. Since they are for-profit businesses, they will suffer from inefficient resources and funds. Unlike public hospitals that are not for profit businesses, private hospitals will have to raise their own funds and do their own management. At times, it becomes hard to get enough funds to maintain the standards that are required for customer satisfaction. The private hospitals also compete with one another and among other hospitals in the locality. Each of them will therefore try to gain competitive advantages through customer satisfaction (Duffy et al. 2004, p.26). The private hospitals therefore have great opportunities of improving since they are in a competitive world. Managers in private hospitals have to find strategies of improving through use of different business models like SWOT analysis (Kara et al 2005; Kandampully & Butler 2001). They can use the analysis to establish opportunities for them to improve. In the end, the services in private hospitals will be relied on by a good percentage of people. The prices for the services in private hospitals are higher compared to the public hospitals. Since they aim at making profits, it is expected that their prices will be higher. This brings in a big challenge since people who are low earning will prefer cheap services thus they will end up getting services from public hospitals. Despite this, a good number prefer satisfaction to prices (Johns, Avci & Karatepe 2004, p. 13). There is a need for the managers in private hospitals to find ways of minimizing their prices. It is a bit tricky however; it can save much since the number of customers will increase when the prices are lowered. From different researches, it has been found that improvement on the reliability-confidence dimension has a positive influence on customer satisfaction in both public and private hospitals. The latter has been established through logistic regression analysis. Therefore, improvement on the reliability-confidence dimension leads to an improvement of the quality of services. The quality is established by the customers thus when they get satisfied with the services they will qualify the services better. Hospitals can therefore increase customer satisfaction by improving on some issue like error free records, informing patients consistently or keeping close relation with the patients, showing sincere interest to the customers, and solving all customers’ problems. This is a great opportunity for private hospitals to improve (Janssens et al. 2008; Jabnoun & Chaker 2003). In some public hospitals, the services are offered free. This brings in a difference between the public and private hospitals. On the other hand, customers use as a tool of measuring the quality of services in public and private hospitals. Many of them assume that free services will be of low quality. The professionals in the public hospitals work for the sake of accomplishing their duties and getting their pay. This is not the case with professionals in private hospitals who work to impress the customer. Many customers will therefore prefer the services in the private hospitals where they will be paying for the services that they receive (Hopwood & Thompson 2006, p.32). A customer will feel more satisfied when he pays for whatever he has received from the professionals. It will therefore be easy for one to go to a private hospital and feel the pinch of paying for the services he has received rather than going to the public hospitals and receiving free treatment. This is something that has been observed to confuse many customers thus; they will look at other factors to identify the quality of services in the private and public hospitals. Private hospitals should ensure that when the services in the public hospitals are offered for free they lower their prices (Freeman 1999, p.21). They can also use other strategies to entice customers like free transport of patients. This is to say that the private hospitals have to find ways of impressing customers so that they cannot opt for free services in the public hospitals. Modernization is another factor that is used by many customers to judge the quality of services in private and public hospitals. The buildings in public hospitals are outdated and they are prone to renovation. Since private hospitals have to be attractive to customers, they are well constructed confronting to modernity. This makes the public hospital to be regarded as poor while the private hospitals are regarded as top notch. Many customers believe that whatever they see from outside it is the same thing that they will find inside the hospitals; the poor physical look of the public hospitals will mean that the services are also poor (Douglas & Connor 2003; Demirel et al. 2009). This makes many customers to justify that private hospitals are better in terms of quality services than the public hospitals. Of most important is recommend that the SERVQUAL scale should be tested in other industries. Since this is the scale that is used in many researches to establish quality, then they should be used in other industries to justify that the results that are got are the right ones. The scale can also be used in different parts of the world to justify how functional it is. There are gaps that have been established between public and private hospitals. I recommend for extensive research to be done identifying the causes of the gaps. The research should also provide solutions to managers in the private hospitals. They will know what they need to do in order to provide quality services to the customers (Caravan 2011, p.33). Since they are all aiming at customer satisfaction, then a variety of researches can help to get ways of achieving such. More research will also be an advantage to the customers since they will be assured that the quality of services will go higher. This will also increase their tests and preferences. Finally, I recommend that in future studies comprehensive suggestions be made on prices and behavioral intentions. This should be included in future studies to help managers gain knowledge on how to make strategies to give them competitive advantages (Boshoff & Gray 2004; Andaleeb 2001). Conclusion Service quality in health care services is a judgment that is usually made by the customers and not organizations. The quality will be quantified in accordance to customer satisfaction. For a business to grow there must be customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer retention. This is what results to better quality as in accordance to the customers. A small business can grow to a big business simply due to better quality services. In public and private hospitals, there are many differences on their performance. There are two dimensions that are used to show the differences between the services in the public hospitals and private hospitals as in accordance to customers. The dimensions, functional quality and technical quality are different. Although professional recommend the use of technical quality to measure the quality of services, customers use functional quality since they do not have knowledge on the technical skills. Private hospitals are considered by the majority to offer higher quality services. This is mainly because they are for-profit businesses thus they must find strategies of enticing customer. They will therefore be impressive from the outside look to the services offered. The operations in the private hospitals are smart however, they have higher prices. This makes it hard for some customers to access such services. Despite this, many customers will prefer quality services even if they are expensive than cheap services that are of low quality. The private hospitals have many opportunities for growing unlike the public hospitals. They should come up with different strategies to win the hospitals in the locality. The private hospitals are in a competitive world thus they should try to get competitive advantages. References Andaleeb, S.S., 2001, Service Quality Perceptions and Patient Satisfaction: A Study of Hospitals in a Developing Country, Soc. Sci.Med, 52(9), p. 1359- 1370. Boshoff, C., & Gray, B., 2004, The Relationship between Service Quality, customer satisfaction and buying intentions in the private hospital industry, South Afr. J. Bus. Manage, 35(4), p. 27-37. Caravan, P., 2011, Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care and Patient Safety, London: CRC Press. Demirel, Y., Yoldas, M. A., Divanoglu, S.U., 2009, Alg?lanan hizmet kalitesinin tatmin, tavsiye davranisi ve tercih uzerine etkisi: Saglik sektorunde bir arastirma, Akademik Bakis, 16, p. 129-143. 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