title: A study of patients' expectations and satisfaction in Singapore hospitals.
abstract: In today's highly competitive healthcare environment, hospitals increasingly realise the need to focus on service quality as a means to improve their competitive position. Customer-based determinants and perceptions of service quality therefore play an important role when choosing a hospital. This paper attempts to determine the expectations and perceptions of patients through the use of a generic, internationally used market research technique called SERVQUAL. An analysis covering 252 patients revealed that there was an overall service quality gap between patients' expectations and perceptions. Thus, improvements are required across all the six dimensions, namely, tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and accessibility and affordability.
authors.affiliation: Management Centre, University of Leicester, UK.
authors.forename: P C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Lim
authors.forename: N K
authors.initials: NK
authors.lastname: Tang
mesh_terms: D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006739:Hospital Administration / Q000592:standards*; D015285:Hospital-Patient Relations; D006801:Humans; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000145:classification*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012846:Singapore; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires