Measuring healthcare service quality from patients' perspective: using Fuzzy AHP application

Attaining superior service quality is a primary concern for all service providers, since they face a constant demand for providing high-quality customer-oriented services. It becomes utmost important to understand consumer expectations and their needs effectively so as to survive in this competitive market. The demand for better service quality is also rising due to the increased aspiration level of customers with an increase in their per capita income. Hospital management needs to recognise and make a match with patients' perception of what service quality (SQ) is and deliver better healthcare services. This paper presents an integration of Fuzzy set theory and SERVQUAL methodology to measure the SQ of four hospitals from Punjab state of India. We have used Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process to find out the priority of each of the dimensions and sub-dimensions of healthcare SQ attributes. The priority is then used for ranking the best hospital from the patient perspective.