Measuring Consumer Satisfaction in Health Care Sector: the Applicability of Servqual

Healthcare is one of India’s largest sectors, in terms of revenue and employment, and one can well witness the sector to expand rapidly. With the fast growing purchasing power, Indian patients are willing to pay more to avail health care services of international standard. In the era of globalization and heightened competition, it has been observed that delivery of quality service is imperative for Indian healthcare providers to satisfy their indoor as well as outdoor patients. Hence, it is essential to be aware of how the patients and patient parties evaluate the quality of health care service. Such an understanding facilitates hospital administration to enhance quality of service and satisfy patients to a great extent as well. SERVQUAL instrument among several tools of measuring service quality and patient satisfaction is the most widely used tool. This paper focuses on the measurement of patient satisfaction in the light of service quality provided by hospitals. In this regard, a review of literature on the application of SERVQUAL model has been considered to investigate the relevance of the same in measuring patient satisfaction in health care sector in today’s competitive environment. On the basis of literature review from secondary sources, the layout of this paper would appear as follows: • Importance of customer satisfaction in service sector • Understanding the concept of patient satisfaction • Analyzing the notion of patient satisfaction as a subset of customer satisfaction • Study of patient satisfaction as a tool for measurement of service quality • Delineating the significance of SERVQUAL model • Drawing the criticisms associated with the SERVQUAL approach to patient satisfaction measurement The paper would end with a clear estimation of the modifications as well as the applicability of the SERVQUAL Model. Based on the platform of secondary literature review, the paper would be a move to outline and unveil the justification of measurement of patient satisfaction in the SERVQUAL way.