Perceived Service Quality, a Key to Improved Patient Satisfaction and Loyalty in Healthcare Delivery: The Servqual Dimension Approach

Hospital's perceived service quality is a degree of discrepancy between patients' perceptions and their expectations about hospitals services. The quality of services which is provided by healthcare providers emphasizes the actual hospital service process. In the hospital, patients' satisfaction and hence loyalty could be widely used to determine hospital service quality. The study adopted a regression and path analysis utilizing SmartPLS V3.2.8; a second-generation multivariate data analysis method (PLS-SEM) approach to analyze the influence of perceived quality of services of hospitals on patient's satisfaction and loyalty based on the SERVQUAL dimensions. The study used data from (562) out-patients who had received services from (4) four major private hospitals in Ghana using purposive census sampling technique. Based on the analysis results, all five dimensions of the health services quality predictor of patients' level of satisfaction and loyalty to the hospital's services, explained that patients' satisfaction and loyalty was affected by all dimensions of health service quality (RATER) simultaneously. Nonetheless, different impacts will be obtained if all dimensions were measured separately. The study incited that patients' satisfaction and loyalty are influenced by the quality of medical/hospital services through its five components: reliability, assurance, tangibility, empathy and responsiveness.