A new service quality scale for hospital emergency rooms

Abstract

PurposeService quality and patient satisfaction have a significant impact in healthcare. Health organizations have also begun to put the customer at the center and meet his or her needs. This study aims to indicate the need to develop a simple and appropriate scale for measuring quality of service in hospital emergency rooms.Design/methodology/approachThe validity and reliability of the scale were established by three separated and independent studies that used exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and correlation analysis to test the nomological network validity of the scale. The data was collected randomly from an internet panel that comprises more than 50,000 people over the age of 18. The research is based on 1,002 Israelis who accompanied a patient to a hospital emergency room.FindingsIn total, 23 items comprised the new scale of emergency room service quality with three dimensions: “staff professionalism”, “staff caring” and “tangibles”. The internal reliability for the total scale was high with Cronbach's α of 0.97.Research limitations/implicationsIn Israel, there is a state health system, and therefore, it is necessary to check the scale elsewhere in the world.Originality/valueThe measurement of service quality for emergency room needed to be focused on the unique charters of the service provided in hospitals’ emergency room. The findings show that a client may assesses the service their loved one has received to decides whether to return to the same hospital and recommend it to his or her friends.