title: Assessment of Service Quality in Teaching Hospitals of Yazd University of Medical Sciences: Using Multi-criteria Decision Making Techniques.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Hospitals as integrated parts of the wide-ranging health care systems have dominant focus on health care provision to meet, maintain and promote people's health needs of a community. This study aimed to assess the service quality of teaching hospitals of Yazd University of Medical Sciences using Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS).
  
  
  METHODS
  A literature review and a qualitative method were used to obtain experts' viewpoints about the quality dimensions of hospital services to design a questionnaire. Then, using a self-made questionnaire, perceptions of 300 patients about the quality of delivered services were gathered. Finally, FAHP was applied to weigh each quality dimension and TOPSIS method to rank hospital wards.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Six dimensions including responsiveness, assurance, security, tangibles, health communication and Patient orientation were identified as affecting aspects of hospital services quality among which, security and tangibles got the highest and lowest importance respectively (0.25406, 0.06883). Findings also revealed that in hospital A, orthopedics and ophthalmology wards obtained the highest score in terms of quality while cardiology department got the lowest ranking (0.954, 0.323). In hospital B, the highest and the lowest ranking was belonged to cardiology and surgical wards (0.895, 0.00) while in hospital C, surgical units were rated higher than internal wards (0.959, 0.851).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Findings emphasized that the security dimension got the lowest ranking among SERVQUAL facets in studied hospitals. This requires hospital executives to pay special attention to the issue of patients' security and plan effectively for its promotion.
authors.affiliation: Hospital Management Research Center, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran.
authors.forename: Milad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shafii
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Management, School of Health, Qazvin University of Medical Sciences, Qazvin, Iran.
authors.forename: Sima
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rafiei
authors.affiliation: Department of Management, University of Applied Sciences, Yazd, Iran.
authors.forename: Fatemeh
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Abooee
authors.affiliation: Health Services Management, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran.
authors.forename: Mohammad Amin
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Bahrami
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Economics, School of Health Management and Information Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Mojtaba
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nouhi
authors.affiliation: Health Human Resources Research Center, School of Management & Information Sciences, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
authors.forename: Farhad
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Lotfi
authors.affiliation: Health Services Management, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran.
authors.forename: Khatere
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Khanjankhani
keywords: FAHP; SERVQUAL; TOPSIS; hospital; service quality