دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی کیفیت خدمات و رضایت بخشی در بخش مراقبت های بهداشتی پاکستان - امرالد 2017

Introduction:

With rising population (and healthcare issues) and a rising focus on improvement in each sector of the economy to achieve competiveness in national economy, the issues of patient satisfaction and service quality are seeking increasing interest among researchers and scholars all over the world. Developed countries are not only improving their healthcare sectors to serve their masses but also making money by promoting healthcare tourism (Lee and Fernando, 2015; Han and Hyun, 2015; Andaleeb, 2001). Developing countries can also reap these benefits by making available high healthcare quality at affordable costs (De Arellano, 2007; Horowitz et al., 2007; Lee and Fernando, 2015) which is a challenging task in countries like Pakistan where healthcare isn’t a priority and issues like patient satisfaction and service quality are receiving more attention of academicians or scholars and less of policymakers or practitioners.

Conclusion and Recommendations:

Healthcare sector is a neglected area in Pakistan despite its growing importance in the developed countries, so the question of healthcare service quality in the country will continue arising again and again in academic papers, reports and news unless the government takes effective steps to lift up the healthcare sector of the country. The theme of this work may not be entirely novel but the study highlights some important issues in order to improve the sanitary system in Pakistan. For instance, the results clearly indicated that the expectations of Pakistani patients are significantly higher from the public hospitals than from the private hospitals in a country where, according to the Constitution, the state is primarily responsible for providing free healthcare facilities to its citizens. The findings also underline the apparently irresponsible attitude of the state in fulfilling its constitutional commitment. One may also argue that most of the patients are well-aware of the responsibilities of the state and thus their expectations from the public sector healthcare facilities are higher as compare to the private sector healthcare facilities. The findings guide the healthcare administrators and the practitioners by revealing on them the difference of expectations in term of the service quality dimensions. As reported in the results section of this paper, in public sector healthcare, the patients most strongly correlate their satisfaction with empathy and assurance and least with tangibility. On the other hand, in private sector healthcare, the correlation of patient satisfaction is strongest with responsiveness and tangibility and weakest with assurance. Thus, it can be said that when patients visit a public hospital they expect from the staff to feel their pain and treat them with courtesy. However, when patients visit private hospitals, they expect to be treated quickly (without delays) and in a comfortable physical setup or infrastructure. Also, the results reveal on the policy makers that if they want to meet the expectations of patients from the country’s overall healthcare sector then they need to pay more attention toward empathy and assurance. This prompts the need to provide effective training to the hospital staffs and practitioners across the board because when patients visit hospitals the first thing they encounter is people not medicine!