An evaluation of service quality gap and patients' satisfaction of Galliera Hospital in Genoa, Italy

Abstract: High service quality of each hospital is a pivotal factor which can lead to the best desired outcome for any patients and hospitals always attempt to improve their performances. To achieve this goal applicants’ opinion has a significant role. Nowadays, patients’ expectation has been increased significantly regarding to service quality of hospitals. However, numbers of hospitals cannot meet these expectations since they never find out their shortfalls according to customers’ evaluation questionnaires. We tried to figure out these deficiency areas in Galliera hospital as a public one in Genoa, Italy. This hospital has almost 500 beds that offer medical services to public. During decades, Galliera has maintained a unique status among public healthcares, since 1995 this hospital has been determined as nationally great and high specialization. To measure the gap between expectation and perception of applicants who chose to go to Galliera hospital, we decided to use SERVEQUAL model by (Parasuraman et al., 1988). We spread Italian and English version of our survey in this hospital to identify service quality deficits. This study tries to understand weakness and strength area by evaluating questions about the quality of services provided by Galliera hospital. These questions assessed the customers’ satisfaction by considering different aspects of the service such as tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The SERVQUAL instrument consists of five dimensions that evaluated by 21 pairs of different statements. On one side of questionnaire, applicants were asked about their expectations regarding to hospital service quality and on the other side they could find statements about their real experiences of current hospital services. Service quality scores were calculated by subtracting expectation scores from perception scores (P-E). Positive or at least zero results show the ideal and suitability of services offered by Galliera hospital. While, the negative scores reflect that the hospital could not meet customers’ expectation. Thus, SERVQUAL instrument was used as a tool to recognize the problem areas of each dimension. The SERVQUL questionnaire collected some demographic information including gender, age, occupation status, number of visit and length of stay in Galliera hospital. Patients were asked to rank the service quality of this hospital based on 5-point Likert from Strongly Agree (5) to Strongly Disagree (1). In overall 200 printed questionnaires were distributed in Galliera hospital and 50 electronic versions also sent by email to patients. From the total questionnaire distributed just 148 of them returned and identified valid for the statistical analyzes. The results of survey from Galliera hospital indicated remarkable differences at p < 0.05 level among expectation and perception scores. Service quality scores (SQ=P-E) for all statements were negative and responsiveness dimension had the maximum gap, however Tangibility and Empathy dimensions had very small gaps among all. The results of demographic information declared some attractive results. This information showed that Length of stay and number of visit had more effect on patients’ point of view compare to the other demographic factors. Following, causal map test has been done on the relationships between service quality, customers’ satisfaction and loyalty. The results indicated that customer satisfaction mediates the connection between perceived quality and customer loyalty. In the last chapter the best recommendations were offered to management of Galliera hospital in order to minimize the SERVQUAL gap. By using the recommendations figured out from this research project, this hospital is able improve the service quality offered to patients and consequently its patients’ satisfaction and loyalty.