The evaluation of transportation services for personnel provided as an outsourced way at a military hospital

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: In this study it was aimed to examine the quality of outsourcing transportation services provided for personnel at a military hospital in Turkey by using SERVQUAL method. MATERIAL AND METHOD: This study was conducted as a cross-sectional study from 7 to 29 August 2014 at a military hospital in Ankara. One thousand questionnaires were distributed, 730 were received back, but 176 were excluded from analysis due to missing or false responses.  The rest of 554 questionnaires were analyzed by using  SPSS for Windows 18.0 package program. The SERVQUAL scale which was developed by Parasuraman et al. (1988) was the main scale in the study. The scale highlights the main components of high quality service as five factors - reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness - that create the acronym RATER. RESULTS: The majority of participants were women (56.4%), between 31-40 old years (47.2 %), and, up to 77.3% of them used transportation services every work day. It was found that the SERVQUAL instrument had a very high reliability. The Cronbach Alpha coefficient was found between 0.86 and 0.91 for expected quality and between 0.74 and 0.91 for perceived quality. The expectations regarding empathy dimension was at the highest level and expectations regarding other dimensions were also at very high level and very close each other. It was determined also that empathy factor was the highest in negative direction among perceived quality mean scores. When the absolute differences between expected and perceived mean scores for the dimension of tangibles of the scale were compared for all age groups, a significant result was found (p=0,021), and the difference for the age group of 51 and more was significantly lower than others. When the mean scores of perceived service quality of groups based on personnel’ status were compared, the significant results were obtained for three dimensions as tangibles, empathy, responsiveness and also total perceived service quality (<0.05). CONCLUSION: The absolute difference between expected and perceived mean scores regarding outsourcing personnel transportation services was found as negative (-). That means that the quality of service was perceived insufficient. Keywords: Outsorcing, Transportation services, hospital