This was my dissertation presentation for PGDM, at Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad. I am not at liberty to disclose the name of the hospital due to ethical and legal reasons. Thank you. Dr. Mohit Saxena drmnsaxena@gmail.com

1. A Study on the Customer Perceptions of Quality of Services of a Large Hospital in New Delhi

3. For service-based economies’, growth is accomplished by increasing competition and technological advances, thus reinforcing service quality as an important and sustaining competitive advantage .

4. The provision of high-quality services is directly related to -

5. increase in profits

6. market share

7. cost savings

9. INTRODUCTION Service Quality Measurement Scales SERVQUAL (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1988) SERVPERF (Cronin &Taylor, 1992) SERVPERF-M Purpose of this study: Measure consumer perceptions of quality of services delivered by a large hospital in Delhi. Evaluate the practical usefulness and the psychometric proprieties of SERVPERF in accessing patients’ perceptions of the hospital service environment.

11. Positive disconfirmation - performance evaluated above level of expectations

12. Confirmation - performance equal to expectations level. There is growing evidence to suggest that this perceived quality is the single most important variable influencing consumers’ perceptions of value, and that this, in turn, affects their intention to purchase products or services.

13. SERVICE QUALITY MEASUREMENT SCALES What’s not measured cannot be managed. SERVQUAL Disconfirmation-based by Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1988 22 pairs of statements that measure consumer’s expectations and perceptions of service performance SERVPERF Performance-based By Cronin & Taylor, 1992 22 statements that measure consumer’s perceptions of service performance SERVPERF-M

15. Reliability, Dimensionality and Validity Statistics for the SERVPERF scale

16. Report the Customer Perceptions for the five dimensions of SERVPERF/SERVQUAL study instrument

17. Report the Customer Perceptions for Services provided by the doctors

18. Study the relation of age to customer perceptions of service quality.

20. Likert Scale - 1 means strongly disagree 7 means strongly agree

21. SERVPERF Questionnaire – 22 Questions

22. Tangibles – 4 Questions

23. Reliability – 5 Questions

24. Responsiveness – 4 Questions

25. Assurance – 4 Questions

26. Empathy – 5 Questions

27. Quality of Services provided by Doctors – 9 Questions

29. Paper based Questionnaire

30. Telephonic interviews to answer the QuestionnaireData Analysis SPSS v16.0 used for coding and analysis of the data

31. RESULTS and DISCUSSION

32. RESULTS and DISCUSSION (Contd.)

33. RESULTS and DISCUSSION (Contd.) SERVPERF SCALE ATTRIBUTES Reliability - property of a measurement instrument that causes it to give similar results for similar inputs.

34. RESULTS and DISCUSSION (Contd.) Dimensionality of the SERVPERF Scale A Factor analysis was performed. Almost all the items loaded on a single factor in the unrotated component matrix. Validity of the SERVPERF Scale Face Validity – ensured by determining from literature Content Validity - adapted from the SERVQUAL measure and consensus achieved in the literature

36. Factor Analysis with Varimax Rotation conducted

37. Could not identify any meaningful dimensions that conform to the dimensions recommended by the SERVQUAL instrument.

38. This could be due to the highly correlated nature of the five dimensions of service quality.

39. Predictive Validity

40. Examined by regressing Overall Service Quality (dependent variable) on the 22 SERVPERF statements scores (independent variables).

42. SERVPERF SCORES

43. SERVPERF SCORES

44. SERVPERF SCORES

45. SERVPERF SCORES

46. SERVPERF SCORES The calculated mean Global Service Quality on the SERVPERF scale for the hospital is 4.791. However, the mean Overall Service Quality on the survey is 4.26. This means that the customers may regard individual service quality attributes higher than when asked for Overall Service Quality.

47. CUSTOMER PERCEPTIONS OF QUALITY OF SERVICES PROVIDED BY DOCTORS Scale Attributes – Reliabilityand Dimensionality Factor analysis - All the items loaded on a single factor in the unrotated component matrix . The reliability, as assessed by Cronbach’s alpha, was 0.934. Hence, the scale can be treated as uni-dimensional.

51. This contributes to construct validity of satisfaction questionnaires.

52. Null Hypothesis H0: There is no relation between Age and Overall Service Quality perception.

53. Alternate Hypothesis H1: There is a relation between Age and Overall Service Quality perception.

54. Pearson Chi-Square test has a significance of 0.011 (p<0.05).

56. OTHER QUESTIONS

57. SALIENT FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Nowadays, the customers are highly discerning and they expect hospitals to provide clean and hygienic environment with adequate civic amenities. The hospital needs to take regular measures to upgrade facilities. Reliability of their services has to be improved a great deal if they want to retain their customers. The study shows that the customers do not have faith in the services promised by the hospital. Responsiveness has a mean score of 4.703, again a warning sign for the hospital since this points towards a lack of service functionality in an, essentially, a service organization.

58. SALIENT FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The hospital personnel should always respond to the requests of the customers. This service attribute may be difficult to overcome due to many reasons, like staff shortage. However, this attribute has to be taken seriously by the hospital to improve the perceptions of service quality on the whole and to maintain competitive advantage. The personnel at the hospital are perceived as courteous. Patients expect hospital personnel to be polite and with improved socio-economic status, this expectation becomes more explicit. If the personnel are not perceived to be polite this can be a significant dissatisfier. The personnel need to be counseled and sensitized on this account. With proper feedback, there is tremendous scope of improvement.

59. SALIENT FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS An encouraging sign for the hospital since the customers believe that the hospital personnel are professionally capable of solving their queries. Empathy rates the lowest among the service quality dimensions. The medical profession is a grim profession and empathy towards patients is a cornerstone of the profession. This shows lack of training of staff in empathic behaviour. The hospital needs to train its staff in empathy towards its customers if they are to survive the competition from other hospitals. The customers may regard individual service quality attributes higher than when asked for Overall Service Quality.

60. SALIENT FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The study shows that the customers have more faith in the doctors at this hospitalthan they have in the hospital itself. The waiting times are perceived as high, which points towards inefficiency in handling the rosters. The hospital needs to augment services and streamline the number of patients seen per physician, so as to decrease waiting time and improve service quality. The patients are also happy with the doctors in terms of their communication and taking their opinions into account. There is need to sensitize doctors about patient expectations, which if heeded to, can improve the service quality without any additional input in terms of resources.

61. SALIENT FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The customers’ perception towards administrative procedures, like completing papers, is not favourable and should be streamlined to improve efficiency and speed of processing. The customers do not agree with the current prices of the services provided by the hospital. The hospital either has to improve its service quality to justify for the prices they charge or it has to reduce the prices for its services.

62. CONCLUSION This is an initial study that is limited in scope. It can for the basis of further studies on the hospital to gauge improvements in service performance and, thus, help in maintaining competitive advantage. This survey can be considered as a pro-active marketing activity designed to improve functional service quality and as a result, increasing customer / patient satisfaction, which is the desired outcome. It is a cost-effective method for assessing service quality and provides insights on deficiencies and potential improvements. This survey should be used as a marketing strategy since it shows that the hospital is a responsive organization.

63. CONCLUSION (Contd.) Top management must place emphasis on change management. Managers in the hospital must use whatever benchmark information that is available to identify potential improvement areas and then use best practices in the industry to improve in these areas. As a long-term solution, it is recommended that the managers should implement an information system that can support efficient management decisions. Help in comparing data with other hospitals to gauge their own performances against those of others. It can reasonably be said that in the current competitive healthcare scenario, customer perception surveys can be an important market information and research tool in the hands of contemporary hospital administrators.

64. Thank You