Quality Of Service In Terms Research Articles

A Stuy of Health Care Reform in China in Light of the USA and Canadian Systems

This article describes and examines the newly implemented basic medical insurance system for urban employees in China. The insurance system was built on two distinct concepts, individual providence and social insurance, and was characterized by national government mandates, local government administration, and employer/employee contributions. The study found that the Chinese basic medical insurance program for urban employees was implemented in all major urban areas. About 130 million people were covered under the scheme as of May 2005. The program benefits are limited with relatively low ceilings on reimbursable expenses and high cost sharing from the insured. The procedure for reimbursement is complicated and time consuming. China can learn from the U.S. and Canadian systems in both financing and providing healthcare. The U.S. system arguably supplies the best medical services in terms of quality and accessibility for those who are insured and those who can pay out of pocket. But the huge costs may not work well with China at present. The Canadian system, which is relatively effective, efficient, and equitable, although not as accessible, may fit China better. The study also suggests that the U.S. employer-based healthcare insurance system requires a major overhaul. It puts U.S. companies at a disadvantaged position in the increasingly competitive global marketplace.

Evaluating credit union members’ perception of service quality through service innovation

The financial market has undergone numerous changes in recent years, becoming more competitive and characterized by offers of increasingly similar products and services by competitors. An alternative for companies to stand out in this market is the introduction of innovations and quality in services. This study proposes to evaluate the perceived quality of financial services by the members of a credit union. The study was conducted at a service unit of a credit union in Paraná State, Brazil. A survey with a sample of 167 members was applied, together with a questionnaire based on the SERVQUAL scale. The expectations and perceptions of the members were compared regarding the quality of services provided. An analysis of the responses enabled an evaluation of the gap between what members expect and what they perceive in terms of service quality. The main contribution of this article lies in the application of the SERVQUAL scale and the concepts of service quality in a cooperative organization in a sector that has been the focus of few academic studies. The results can be used to promote improvement processes in the services of the sector.

Tri-service model: a concept of service quality

In this highly competitive and increasingly saturated market, the telecommunication industry can only gain profit by retaining their existing customers by providing high service quality. Using the Indian Public Sector Units (PSUs) as an example, this work aims at studying the major factors of service quality and assessing the customer’s perceived quality of three services (fixed-line, broadband, and mobile). A systematic hybrid multiple criteria decision-making method that combines the analytical hierarchical process technique and the fuzzy synthetic evaluation has been used to examine the service quality framework and evaluate the quality level of the three services used by the PSU customers. The interdependence relation shows that interaction quality, environment quality, provisioning quality, communication quality, value-added service quality, grievance handling quality, and tariff management are the seven major factors in terms of service quality. Grievance handling and interaction qualities and tariff management have become the hygiene factors with regard to customer satisfaction. The assessment of the quality level of three services used by the PSU customers in India suggested that poor service quality enhances the risk of customer migration. The results also indicate that strong interaction and grievance-handling strategies with better communication quality can retain the existing customers. The results presented are limited to the Indian society. It may be adapt to measure service quality of different telecom operators under cross-cultural environment. This research contributes to the literature in the following ways: firstly, it identifies the different quality factors for the telecom service providers in India to assess their service quality. In the next stage, this research examines the priorities of these factors, and in the last, it demonstrates the consumer’s perception of PSU service quality. The quality of service depends on the better interaction and timely solution of the grievances. The relative importance of the factors of telecom service quality has been investigated, and a site-plan for customer retention in the telecom industry has been provided to the managers. To the best of our knowledge, no researchers have tested the service quality of three telecom services on a single platform.

Overall satisfaction of health care users with the quality of and access to health care services: a cross-sectional study in six Central and Eastern European countries.

BackgroundThe measurement of consumer satisfaction is an essential part of the assessment of health care services in terms of service quality and health care system responsiveness. Studies across Europe have described various strategies health care users employ to secure services with good quality and quick access. In Central and Eastern European countries, such strategies also include informal payments to health care providers. This paper analyzes the satisfaction of health care users with the quality of and access to health care services. The study focuses on six Central and Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Ukraine).MethodsWe use data on past experience with health care use collected in 2010 through uniform national surveys in these countries. Based on these data, we carry out a multi-country analysis to investigate factors associated with the satisfaction of health care users in the six countries.ResultsThe results indicate that about 10-14 % of the service users are not satisfied with the quality of, or access to health care services they used in the preceding year. However, significant differences across countries and services are observed, e.g. the highest level of dissatisfaction with access to outpatient services (16.4 %) is observed among patients in Lithuania, while in Poland, the level of dissatisfaction with quality of outpatient and inpatient services are much lower than dissatisfaction with access. The study also analyses the association of users’ satisfaction with factors such as making informal payments, inability to pay and relative importance of service attributes stated by the service users.ConclusionsThese multi-country findings provide evidence for health policy making in the Central and Eastern European countries. Although the average rates of satisfactions per country are relatively high, the results suggest that there is ample room for improvements. Specifically, many service-users still report dissatisfaction especially those who pay informally and those unable to pay. The high shares of informal payments and inability of users to deal with the health expenditures lead to doubts about the fairness of the health care provision in Central and Eastern Europe. There is an urgent need for policy makers in the region to not only acknowledge but also to effectively address this key problem.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1585-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The effect of 5S-Continuous Quality Improvement-Total Quality Management approach on staff motivation, patients’ waiting time and patient satisfaction with services at hospitals in Uganda

This study aimed at analyzing the effect of 5S practice on staff motivation, patients’ waiting time and patient satisfaction with health services at hospitals in Uganda. Double-difference estimates were measured for 13 Regional Referral Hospitals and eight General Hospitals implementing 5S practice separately. The study for Regional Referral Hospitals revealed 5S practice had the effect on staff motivation in terms of commitment to work in the current hospital and waiting time in the dispensary in 10 hospitals implementing 5S, but significant difference was not identified on patient satisfaction. The study for General Hospitals indicated the effect of 5S practice on patient satisfaction as well as waiting time, but staff motivation in two hospitals did not improve. 5S practice enables the hospitals to improve the quality of services in terms of staff motivation, waiting time and patient satisfaction and it takes as least four years in Uganda. The fourth year since the commencement of 5S can be a threshold to move forward to the next step, Continuous Quality Improvement.

Penerapan Metode SERVQUAL pada Bank X

The banking sector had become industrial which keeps growing. Competition requires each bank competing to attract many customers in many ways both in terms of products, technologies, and services. Marketing Research Indonesia (MRI) performs measurements of the services quality of the banking. X Bank occupies the fifth position in terms of service quality. X Bank need to do repair service constantly to improve customer loyalty. The method used was servqual consisting of five dimensions. Based on gap between perception and expectations known priority on X Bank. Repair service with the main priority is customer service quickly. A long customer service cause long queue at customer service and teller. Typically, most clients come at the beginning of the month. However, a large number of customer that are not anticipated by the number of teller and customer service. Customer satisfaction level of this attribute only 68,09%. That means the banks need to make improvements such as by adding the number of teller and customer service at a particular time and organizing shift work teller and customer service more effectively.Keywords : service quality, gap, Marketing Research Indonesia.

Analisis Pengaruh Kualitas Pelayanan Dan Disiplin Kerja Karyawan Terhadap Kepuasan Pasien Askes Di Pt Askes Kediri

Abstract This research is motivated researcher observations and experiences, especiallythat of PT Askes Kediri Askes Patients who are less sensitive in terms of quality ofservice and low sense of employee discipline in obeying the rules. As a result, manypatients who are less conscious and lazy to perform administrative activities.The problem of this study is (1) Is the quality of health care insurance in effecton patients’ satisfaction, PT Askes Kediri? (2) Is the employee disciplinary effect onpatient satisfaction in PT Askes Kediri? (3) Is the quality of service and employeediscipline effect on patient satisfaction in PT Askes Kediri?This study used a qualitative approach to formulating a hypothesis, then thehypothesis will be tested using a quantitative approach. Where the data obtained willbe calculated using the formula and test the statistical analisisaConclusion The results of this study were (1) Variable quality of service (X1)to simultaneously deliver significant influence on patient satisfaction in PT Askeskediri with a probability value of b1 is 0.017 less than 0.05. (2) Variable disciplineemployees (X2) simultaneously providing significant influence on patient satisfactionin PT Askes Kediri with a probability value of b2 is 0.031 less than0.05. (3) Variable quality of service (X1) has a regression coefficient (β) for = 0.149,employee discipline (X2) is 0.123, thus it can be said that the service quality variable(X1) has a dominant influence on patient satisfaction in PT Askes Kediri .Conclusionsbased on these results, it is recommended: (1) the principal purpose of the applicationquality of service and employee discipline is to give satisfaction to the patient.Therefore, employees should always put quality of service and employee discipline.(2) the employee must be continuously examined, to prove whether the quality ofcare and discipline works are in accordance with the applicable rules. Keywords: Quality of Service, Employee Discipline, Patient Satisfaction.

Traffic Analysis of Quality of Service (QoS) for Video Conferencing between Main Campus and Sub Campus in Laboratory Scale

Recently, in the distance learning system, video conferencing becomes one of expected course material delivery systems for creating a virtual class such that lecturer and student which are separated at long distance can engage a learning activity as well as face to face learning system. For this reason, the service availability and quality should be able to guaranteed and fulfilled. In this research, we analyze QoS of video conferencing between main campus and sub campus as the implementation of distance learning system in laboratory scale. Our experimental results show that the channel capacity or bandwidth of WAN connection between main campus and sub campus at 128 kbps is able to generate the throughput of video transmission and reception at 281 kbps and 24 kbps, respectively. Meanwhile, throughput of audio transmission and reception is 64 kbps and 26 kbps with the number of total packet loss for video and audio transmission is 84.3% and 29.2%, respectively. In this setting, the total jitter for video and audio transmission is 125 ms and 21 ms, respectively. In this case, there is no packet loss for traffic transmitting and receiving with jitter is not more than 5 ms. We also implemented QoS using Trust CoS model dan Trust DSCP for improving the quality of service in term of jitter up to 12.3% and 22.41%, respectively.Keywords: quality of service, throughput, delay, jitter, packet loss, Trust CoS, Trust DSCP

Customer Satisfaction Level in Islamic Banking and conventional Banking (A Case of Pakistan)

The main purpose of this research study was to identify the level of customer’s satisfaction by using the products and services of both Islamic and conventional banks in Pakistan. Furthermore, this research study determined the customer’s satisfaction level in banking in terms of; internet banking, management interaction and the banking environment, service quality in term of SERVQUAL model, ATM facilities, privacy and security The main objective of the study was to investigate the following main points.(1) Customer`s satisfaction level in Islamic and conventional banks. (2) Why customers prefer to choose Islamic banking system in Pakistan? (3) Why customers prefer to choose conventional banking system in Pakistan? It is therefore, a critical literature has been carried out which investigated the real factors through which customer satisfaction take place in banking sector. The closed ended questionnaire has been used in this research study in order to collect research data. To analyze the collected data, cross tabulations and charts have also been used which showed the satisfaction level of the customers of Islamic and conventional banks and also to differentiate between the participant`s responses of Islamic and conventional banks. A large number of factors have been observed from the research study analysis which illustrated that, in Pakistan, customers are more satisfied from the products and services of conventional banks rather than that of Islamic banks. However, in Pakistan, the customer satisfaction in all financial institutions is not as good as according to the standard. In addition, the banking sector is trying to improve all of their products and services and want to make them according to the international standard. But due to various factors such as; the political instability and religious norms, the banking sector is still far behind.

Software Performance Testing Using Dynamic Load Generation in Cloud Environment

Cloud computing provides flexibility in allocating resources such as CPU and memory using virtual machines. A cloud application must provide better quality of service in terms of availability of memory, execution time and allocation of CPU. Virtualization helps to reduce the energy by allocating optimal number of physical machines. The workload between the virtual machines and the real machines must match in order to improve the performance of the cloud system. For this purpose, this paper proposes an Equal Priority and Cluster Based Load Balancing Algorithm (EPCLBA) for balancing the load in cloud computing environment that uses honey bee optimization technique for effective clustering of resources.In this work, a cluster of resources including servers and databases are allocated for user requests in order to perform load balancing. This helps to reduce the number of I/O operations leading to increase in performance and reduction in energy. Moreover, this paper changes the number of virtual machines depending on the type of applications. For CPU intensive applications, it allocates virtual machines with more CPU power. On the other hand for data intensive applications, it allocates machines with higher database features for enhanced storage. From the experiments carried out in this work, it is observed that the performance of the cloud system is depending on the type of workload allocation method used by the application. This system was tested using a ticket booking application and proved that virtual machine allocation using the proposed cluster based method reduces the I/O operations and enhances the processing power by reducing the time to process the requests.

What Is Remedial Secondary Infrastructure? Implications for Infrastructure Design, Policy for Sustainability, and Resilience

The phenomenon of remedial secondary infrastructure (RSI) is omnipresent in cities of developing nations where the municipality has provided basic primary infrastructure (often in a largerscaled central network design), but these services are viewed as inconsistent and unreliable. Consequently, in response, individual households privately purchase additional infrastructure services to correct, or remediate, the already provided for primary infrastructure—hence the name remedial secondary infrastructure. RSI affects all socioeconomic levels, and has profound implications for the day-to-day quality of life for citizens, as well as economic and environmental impacts and the resilience of cities. Yet, RSI has not been defined, or specifically discussed, in the context of infrastructure policy and design. The existence of RSI represents a failed primary delivery of basic services in terms of quality and/or reliability to the household, and also indicates that residents have developed a long-standing mistrust that an infrastructure system could be maintained without RSI. This communication presents (1) a definition of RSI; (2) clarifying RSI unique characteristics; and (3) implications for future infrastructure design and policy.

Adherence to Antiretroviral Treatment Services and Associated Factors among Clients Attending ART Clinics in Hosanna Town, Southern Ethiopia

Background: Global burden of HIV/AIDS remain enormous. Ethiopia is one of the Sub-Saharan countries that are hardly hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Adherence is a vital component and main concern knotted with strategic decisions in service provisions. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to assess adherence to antiretroviral treatment and associated factors among clients attending ART clinics in Hosanna town. Methods: Cross sectional study design using both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection was conducted from January to February, 2015. Consecutive sampling technique was applied to select individual client. Data was analyzed by using SPSS version 16.0. Binary logistic regressions were used to identify independent predictors. Qualitative data was collected using in-depth interview with clients and health providers and used for concurrent triangulation with quantitative one. Results: The study revealed that adherence rate to ART treatment of clients was 90.70%. As independent predictors, rural residents [AOR (95%CI)=2.14 (1.12 to 3.01)], and marital status (divorced) [AOR (95%CI)=2.37 (1.33 to 4.24)] were positively associated with non-adherence whereas living alone [AOR (95%CI)=0.37 (0.19 to 0.72)] and perceived availability of services [AOR (95%CI)=0.16 (1.03 to 1.31)] were negatively associated with non-adherence. In total, 76.98% of the variance in the quality of services in terms of adherence could be explained by Donabedian model. Conclusion: Despite higher numbers of clients was adherence to ART treatment, considerably intolerable numbers were below level of adherence in the service provided. Therefore, due attention should give to fill the gap of perception of the clients to existing services through ART mentorship by inaugurating with IEC/BCC in the context of their residence, educational level and living conditions.

A bandwidth allocation scheme to improve fairness in data center networks

The development of various Internet technologies has enabled users to connect to the Internet through a wide variety of access networks and communication terminals. This has brought a great demand for cloud computing which allows users to enjoy various Internet services provided by data centers (DCs) anytime, anywhere. In cloud computing, though, users more distant from DCs receive a poorer quality of service in terms of transmission rates because of the TCP RTT-unfairness problem. Therefore, we propose a bandwidth allocation scheme based on collectable information in DC networks to enable fair communication service to each user. We have confirmed the effectiveness of this approach through simulation evaluations.

QoS-Aware Energy Management in Body Sensor Nodes Powered by Human Energy Harvesting

Harvesting energy in the human environment has been identified as an effective way to charge the body sensor nodes in wireless body area networks (WBANs). In such networks, the capability of the nodes to detect events is of vital importance and complements the stringent quality of service (QoS) demands in terms of delay, throughput, and packet loss. However, the scarce energy collected by human motions, along with the strict requirements of vital health signals in terms of QoS, raises important challenges for WBANs and stresses the need for new integrated QoS-aware energy management schemes. In this paper, we propose a joint power-QoS (PEH-QoS) control scheme, composed of three modules that interact in order to make optimal use of energy and achieve the best possible QoS. The proposed scheme ensures that a sensor node is able to detect the medical events and transmit the respective data packets efficiently. Extensive simulations, conducted for different human activities (i.e., relaxing, walking, running, and cycling), have shown that the application of PEH-QoS in a medical node increases the detection efficiency, the throughput, and the energy efficiency of the system.

A Reliability based Variant of AODV in MANETs: Proposal, Analysis and Comparison

The basic framework of MANETs relies on best effort delivery of data and does not make any promises regarding assuring Reliability or Quality of Services. Seeing today's demand of multimedia applications and need of being always connected with or without internet is constantly attracting the researchers to evolve the MANETs (Mobile Ad hoc Networks) in order to assure the guarantee of services in terms of quality. In this paper the authors have critically examined the basic AODV a reactive routing protocol of MANET, with all its positive and negative characteristics. AODV (Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector) is also examined for Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning. In this paper to support QoS, a Reliability aware variant of AODV is proposed. This reliability aware variant of AODV (RA-AODV) is based on conferring stability to routes. The chosen routes are constrained with End-to-End Delay and Bandwidth parameters to provide quality services to application layer. After that to enhance the reliability speed of intermediate nodes is taken into account . If node moves with slow speed stability of route is not hampered but if not, high speed node has to adjust some of its neighbouring node which can act on its behalf as a part of ongoing route part. An extensive simulation performed on basic AODV, MAODV (Modified-AODV constrained with EED and Bandwidth only, no speed parameter considers) and RA-AODV (Reliability Assured AODV) is tabulated and presented graphically in terms of PDR (Packet Delivery Ratio), Throughput and EED (End-to-End Delay) based on Mobility.

Fuzzy Analysis and Evaluation of Public Transport Service Quality: A Case Study of Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania

Urban public transport plays a critical role in stimulating economic development of any nation since most of the revenues come from cities. The majority of the city dwellers of any country use public transport. The evaluation of public transport service quality provides a valuable feedback to commuter operators to ensure continuous improvement of level of service and to the government to take appropriate measures for enhancing the quality of public transport service. This paper analyses and evaluates service quality of Road Public Transport (RPT) (i.e. minibuses and buses) and Urban Rail Transport (URT) in Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania. Since service quality and its attributes are intangible and vague, a fuzzy evaluation model is developed and applied. The formulated model is composed of Fuzzy Entropy Method (FEM) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The overall evaluation procedure is as follows: initially, an intensive literature search and experts’ opinions are employed to establish criteria for evaluating the service quality of public transport in Dar es Salaam City. The developed FEM is used to obtain criteria weight. Lastly, the formulated TOPSIS is used to provide an overall ranking of urban public transport service quality. The overall evaluation shows that urban rail transport outperforms road public transport in terms of service quality. Nevertheless, the urban rail transport service in Dar es Salaam City is currently not well developed as it is provided on very limited routes. Thus, the Tanzania government, the rail transport operator i.e. Tanzania Railway Limited (TRL) and the agency responsible for the provision of rail infrastructure i.e. Reli Assets Holding Company (RAHCO) are advised to design and employ Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) schemes i.e. concession contracts to invest more in rolling stocks, locomotives and rail wagons so that the rail transport service is available on many routes of the road public transport to bring fair competition between the two operators.

Cocktail: a service-oriented cloud storage architecture for enhancing service quality

Cloud computing is getting increasingly popular because of its various benefits. Although many free cloud storage services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. are available on the internet, there exist some problems in using such services. Those public cloud storage services can be more convenient and more valuable if those problems are resolved. The first problem is the limitation of the service, such as space limit, file size limit and file type limit. Secondly, different cloud storage services provide different functions so that users may have to use multiple services simultaneously in order to fulfil their needs. The process of logging in and using multiple services might be very complicated. Thirdly, users may not be able to access or even lose their data owing to incidents such as server down, network failure, and availability problems. The goal of this research is to compose a service named Cocktail by using the service-oriented computing SOC as the fundamental design approach to solve these three problems and enhance the service quality in terms of the reliability, availability and scalability of free cloud services.

THE AIRPORT SERVICE QUALITY: CASE STUDY SARAJEVO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

Every successful company focuses business policy on the quality of service and customer satisfaction. The level of quality services provided and the level of customer satisfaction are among the main determinants of the profitability of service companies, including airports. Absence of research and valid data regarding airport service quality in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including Sarajevo Airport was the key motive for this paperwork. Without having this data/information airport management is not able to manage successful service quality and achieve passenger satisfaction. The intention of this study is to provide a deeper insight into needs of modern passenger through the analysis of theoretical information and through customer research of satisfaction conducted at Sarajevo International Airport. The study was performed by using structured questionnaire (66 questions). Based on the existing literature for research, the authors adapted and expanded the query, used by ACI – AETRA ASQ program. 500 questionnaires were distributed and 440 collected, which makes the response rate of 88%. By the literature analysis and conducted research the most important factors that influence the perception of passengers in terms of service quality at Sarajevo Airport were identified: „check-in“, Internet WIFI, security, foodservices, cleanness and staff hospitality. The success of the airport depends on how well the airport knows and to what extent satisfies different groups of airport users. This paperwork confirmed the importance of service quality management and customer satisfaction for the long term success of the airport. The results of conducted research at the Sarajevo Airport, also indicate that it is possible to define services which, according to the opinion of passengers, significantly influence the level of satisfaction and perceived quality of provided services and those are the following: „Check-in“, Internet WIFI, airport security, restaurant services, cleanness of passenger terminal and staff hospitality.

Relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction: a study of Malaysian banking industry

Service quality and customer satisfaction are some of the most important factors of business competition for banking industry. With the increasingly intense competition for customers in today's banking industry, these factors are high management priorities. Using data collected from 200 bank customers in two major cities in Klang Valley, Malaysia, we investigate whether the five dimensions of SERVQUAL have an impact on customer satisfaction in Malaysian banking industry. We found out that the expectations of Malaysian banking customers are higher than perceptions in terms of service quality and tangible dimension has the largest influence on customer satisfaction. The findings provide several implications for bank management to improve upon their customer service quality in order to benefit from customer satisfaction which will lead to greater competitive advantage and profitability to the institutions concerned.

THE CORRELATION BETWEEN SPATIAL PLANNING AND SUSTAINABLE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT: CASE STUDY OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Every successful company focuses business policy on the quality of service and customer satisfaction. The level of quality services provided and the level of customer satisfaction are among the main determinants of the profitability of service companies, including airports. Absence of research and valid data regarding airport service quality in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including Sarajevo Airport was the key motive for this paperwork. Without having this data/information airport management is not able to manage successful service quality and achieve passenger satisfaction. The intention of this study is to provide a deeper insight into needs of modern passenger through the analysis of theoretical information and through customer research of satisfaction conducted at Sarajevo International Airport. The study was performed by using structured questionnaire (66 questions). Based on the existing literature for research, the authors adapted and expanded the query, used by ACI – AETRA ASQ program. 500 questionnaires were distributed and 440 collected, which makes the response rate of 88%. By the literature analysis and conducted research the most important factors that influence the perception of passengers in terms of service quality at Sarajevo Airport were identified: „check-in“, Internet WIFI, security, foodservices, cleanness and staff hospitality. The success of the airport depends on how well the airport knows and to what extent satisfies different groups of airport users. This paperwork confirmed the importance of service quality management and customer satisfaction for the long term success of the airport. The results of conducted research at the Sarajevo Airport, also indicate that it is possible to define services which, according to the opinion of passengers, significantly influence the level of satisfaction and perceived quality of provided services and those are the following: „Check-in“, Internet WIFI, airport security, restaurant services, cleanness of passenger terminal and staff hospitality.