Measuring patients' perceived hospital service quality: A case study of Nepal's Private Hospitals

Abstract

With the shift in focus to patient recognizing healthcare to be different compared to other services, service quality measurement needs to be tuned specifically to healthcare. The purpose of this paper is to describe hospital service quality of Nepal's private hospital as perceived by Nepalese patients and to which patients’ satisfaction of health service quality impact upon their behavioral intention. Descriptive survey study design was adopted for this study. Survey method and 400 questionnaires were distributed to the out- patient. Only four private hospitals were evaluated in Kathmandu City. The data was analyzed using simple linear regression Analysis was applied to envisage the relation between dependent and independent variables. The researcher found that there exists a correlation between customer satisfaction and behavioral intention. Also, hospital service quality has an impact upon customer satisfaction. From the findings the researcher concludes to develop the right approaches personalization need to be improved which stabilizes the system appropriately and be contextualized to the true environment of the Nepalese consumers. Healthcare provider and hospital management should allocate the effort towards personalization to maximize patient satisfaction and to improve the perceived quality of healthcare services.