Abstract
From a marketing perspective, service quality is measured as a perceived discrepancy between the consumers' expectations and was actually performed in health care services. The most widely and validated measurement is the SERVQUAL scale. However, a variety of SERVQUAL scales have been applied in different health care environments without taking into consideration the specialty of the health care service. Thus, the objective of this paper was to measure the service quality in the Romanian ophthalmology private organizations using the SERVQUAL measurement, by identifying the SERVQUAL dimensions, which register the highest and the lowest gap scores. The instrument for data collection was the SERVQUAL self-administered questionnaire that consisted of 22 items measured on a 5-point Likert scale. The sample size encompassed 100 participants and the sampling technique was the snowball. The internal consistency, validity and the reliability of the SERVQUAL scale was determined by the Cronbach's alpha coefficients and factor analysis. The SERVQUAL questionnaire focused on 5 dimensions (tangibles, reliability, assurance, empathy and responsiveness) and each dimension, in its turn, was characterized by different items. The mean age of the participants was 49.52 years, with a mean income of 3031 Romanian Currency and the mean period of wearing eyeglasses was 5 years (±2). Further, there were 47% females and 53% males. The overall internal consistency of the SERVQUAL scale, as well as the dimensions' internal consistency were all above 0.7 and the factor analysis revealed that the items loaded properly on each dimension. Moreover, the gap scores of the SERVQUAL scale's dimensions pinpointed that the highest gap score was registered by the Tangibles dimension and the lowest gap score was registered by the Reliability dimension. Performing the ophthalmology service right the first time, contributes significantly to the improvement of the marketing effectiveness and the operating efficiency.
Highlights
Nowadays, the competition in private health care ophthalmology organizations has increased and, in order to survive, they have to deliver services that satisfy the consumer’s needs [1,2]
After the elaboration of the SERVQUAL scale, many specialists applied it on health care services in the shape of 22-item format or modified, proving its usefulness in assessing the service quality as perceived by consumers in hospitals, clinics and other medical centers [30,31]
The investigation of the quality in health care services has raised many controversies regarding their implementation and validation owing to their credence particularities
Summary
The competition in private health care ophthalmology organizations has increased and, in order to survive, they have to deliver services that satisfy the consumer’s needs [1,2]. The key factor in differentiating services, which assures a competitive advantage as well as consumer retention, positive word-of-mouth, increased profitability, financial performance and consumer satisfaction, is the service quality [3,4,5]. Studies in the health care field confirmed that high quality services are linked directly to increased market share, profits, and savings for an organization [6]. Healthcare is a credence service, patients being unable to assess the technical service quality accurately, functional quality is the primary judgmental feature. Quality is a judgmental concept [12] and patients form their perceptions on the operational part of the quality [13]
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