title: Service quality assessment of a referral hospital in southern Iran with SERVQUAL technique: patients' perspective.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Providing services to patients according to their expectations and needs is necessary for the success of an organization in order to remain in the competitive market. Recognizing these needs and expectations is an important step in offering high quality services. This study was designed to determine the service quality gap of the main hospital of Hormozgan province.
  
  
  METHODS
  This cross sectional study was conducted in 2013 in Bandar Abbas ShahidMohammadi Hospital in the south of Iran. All 96 participants of this study were provided by SERVQUAL questionnaire. Data was analyzed by Wilcoxon and Kruskal-Wallis tests.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Service quality gaps were seen in all five service quality dimensions and the overall quality of service. The mean of quality perception score and quality expectation score was 3.44 ± 0.693 and 4.736 ± 0.34, respectively. The highest perception was in assurance dimension and the highest expectation was in Responsiveness and assurance dimensions. Also, the lowest perception was in responsiveness dimension and the lowest expectation was about empathy. In this study, 56.1% of participants defined the quality of services as average.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  According to the results, this hospital was not able to meet patients' expectations completely. Therefore, action must be taken to decrease the gap between the perception and expectation of the patients.
authors: Teamur
authors: T
authors: Aghamolaei
authors: Tasnim Eghbal
authors: TE
authors: Eftekhaari
authors: Shideh
authors: S
authors: Rafati
authors: Social Determinants for Health Promotion Research Center, Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences, Bandar Abbas, Iran. kahnooji56@gmail.com.
authors: Kobra
authors: K
authors: Kahnouji
authors: Shamsieh
authors: S
authors: Ahangari
authors: Mohammad Esmaeil
authors: ME
authors: Shahrzad
authors: Ataollah
authors: A
authors: Kahnouji
authors: Seyedeh Hamideh
authors: SH
authors: Hoseini
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006302:Health Services Research; D006761:Hospitals / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D007492:Iran; D008297:Male; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires