Abstract
Purpose: To analyze the key factors and decision-making behaviors affecting overall satisfaction based on perceptual data of outpatients.Methods: The official satisfaction questionnaire developed by the National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China was used. Rough set theory was used to identify the perception patterns between condition attributes (i.e., service factors) and a decision attribute (i.e., overall service level) and to express them in rule form (i.e., if-then).Results: The four minimal-coverage rules, with strength exceeding 10% in the good class, and six crucial condition attributes were obtained: “Ease of registration (C1),” “Respected by registered staff (C2),” “Registered staff's listening (C3),” “Respected by doctor (C9),” “Signpost (C12),” and “Privacy (C16).” In addition, the average hit rate for 5-fold cross-validation was 90.86%.Conclusions: A series of decision rules could help decision-makers easily understand outpatients' situations and propose more suitable programs for improving hospital service quality because these decision rules are based on actual outpatient experiences.
Highlights
Hospitals are a service industry whose medical service directly affects patient’s lives, medical treatment, and health care [1]
Hospital service quality involves both qualitative and quantitative factors, which belong to multi-attribute decision-making (MADM)
Altuntas et al developed a MADM method based on a weighted SERVQUAL scale for measuring the perceived service quality of hospitals [5]
Summary
Hospitals are a service industry whose medical service directly affects patient’s lives, medical treatment, and health care [1]. Outpatient service is the main medical service provided by hospitals, and most outpatients usually need medium- or long-term diagnosis and treatment. When a hospital meets the needs of existing patients, it attracts more potential patients [2, 3]. For these reasons, it is crucial for hospital management to understand and improve the satisfaction of outpatients [4,5,6,7,8]. Hospital service quality involves both qualitative and quantitative factors, which belong to multi-attribute decision-making (MADM). Altuntas et al developed a MADM method based on a weighted SERVQUAL scale for measuring the perceived service quality of hospitals [5]. Shieh et al developed the modified Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
