HEALTHQUAL: a multi-item scale for assessing healthcare service quality

The purpose of this study is to examine the measurement dimensions of healthcare service quality proposed in previous studies, quality awards, and service quality accreditation and/or certification systems in the international community. Based on this review, a comprehensive set of healthcare service quality (HEALTHQUAL) measurement items is derived focusing on care processes and results. Thus, the study investigated priorities among the nine measurement items identified through 368 patients and 389 public respondents in South Korea. The results show that the degree of care improvements (26.55 %) was rated as the most important and the second was tangibles (19.82 %) by both groups. The proposed measurement items for HEALTHQUAL were tested using data collected from 385 patients and 251 public respondents at a hospital with more than 500 beds in South Korea. The proposed HEALTHQUAL model consisted of the following five components: empathy, tangibles, safety, efficiency, and degree of improvements of care service.