(An Investigaiton of Inpatients’ and Outpatients’ Perceptions of Healthcare Quality for Different Hospital Types)

Abstract

Purpose – This paper investigates the inpatients’ and outpatients’ perception of healthcare quality and aims to reveal if their perceptions differ in terms of hospital type. Services before the treatment, physician services, personal needs-laboratory services and physical environment were used as sub-dimensions of healthcare services. Design/methodology/approach – The research was conducted in Mugla-Turkey, and the data were collected via questionnaires from inpatients and outpatients treated in state, private and university hospitals. Analysis of variance test and t-test were used to analyze the data. Findings – For all dimensions, outpatients’ service quality perceptions of private hospitals are higher than public hospitals and university hospitals except physician services for the latter. Inpatients’ service quality perceptions of private hospitals are higher than public and university hospitals for the sub-dimensions of services before the treatment and personal needs-laboratory services. Besides, inpatients’ service quality perceptions of private hospitals are higher than public hospitals for only dimension of physical environment. Discussion – Service quality perceptions of inpatients’ and outpatients’ are not significantly different for both university and private hospitals. However, for public hospitals, inpatients perceive a higher quality than outpatients for only the dimension of personal needs-laboratory services. In this context, except in spesific services, inpatients and outpatients cannot be seen as separate stakeholders in terms of service quality evaluations.