A study of service quality of public and private general out-patient clinics in Hong Kong

Abstract

In service quality literatures, one of the services that studied most is health care services. Although general outpatient services is regarded as the first gate of the health care system, it receives less awareness in past researches. Therefore, the current research fills the research gap by studying the service quality of public and private general outpatient clinics in Hong Kong. A scale is developed for measuring service quality in outpatient clinics base on SERVQUAL with several modifications. The questionnaire is then administered in 9 Public General Outpatient Clinics and 7 branches of a private medical company, 511 and 397 usable data is collected respectively. As expected, the survey result shows that private clinics provide higher service quality to patients. Applications of the developed scale are discussed and demonstrated. In line with past literatures, the survey data is first analyzed by Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) method; their solutions are used for constructing five Structural Equation Models (SEM). Two factors are consistently retained in the service quality measurement models; they are moderately correlated in both data. For private clinic, Willingness to Help is found a significant driver of service quality across three structural equation models. Outcome & Choice (in Model 1) or Care to Patients & Communication (in Model 2 and 3) is another factor. For public clinic, Tangibles has higher impact to service quality across two models, Willingness to Help, Outcome & Communication (in Model 1) or Willingness to Help, Outcome & Choice (in Model 2) is another significant factor. The relationship among service quality – satisfaction – purchase intention is supported in this research, it also calls for the awareness on research procedures used in “EFA and then SEM” type research.

Date of Award	15 Feb 2006
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Kwok Fai Geoffrey TSO (Supervisor)