Development and Validation of Survey Instrument for Measurement of Hospital Functional Service Quality

Abstract

Background: Emergency, diagnostics, and surgical services are critical areas of hospitals both in terms of technicalities and resource creation. The literature review reflects that there is a need to develop a survey instrument-based measurement model that can identify areas of functional service quality within hospital facilities based on patients’ perspectives as hospital quality improvement initiatives. Objective: To design and validate an instrument that helps to evaluate the functional service quality of hospitals using structural equation modeling. Methods: It was a mixed-method research having a cross-sectional study design. A total of 817 responses were purposively collected from consumers of surgical, emergency, and diagnostic departments of tertiary care hospitals. Simple descriptive, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to identify the factors to formulate the instrument using SPSS Amos 20.0 Results: The study validated seven constructs for the development of Func.Qual (Survey instrument named to measure hospital functional service quality). Amongst these constructs’ assurance, responsiveness communication, and reliability are critical contributing factors reported earlier. Whereas promptness, food and aesthetics are new constructs extracted in local settings. The values of goodness of model fit indices found statistically valid with Comparative Fit Index (CFI=0.96), Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA=0.055) and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR=0.05). Conclusion: Func.Qual is a powerful survey instrument to measure hospital functional service quality. The current study is an effort to enrich the literature associated with the body of knowledge for hospital functional service quality.