An Empirical Exploration of Hospital Service Quality Assessment Criteria in China

Abstract

This paper reports on a research project within the context of the Chinese healthcare sector. From a functional quality aspect, the research identifies, selects and confirms the service quality assessment criteria suitable for Chinese hospitals via literature search, focus group and survey investigation; the numbers of the criteria have also been reduced based on principal component analysis; then through importance-performance analysis, provides further understanding/prioritisation on the criteria and also groups them accordingly to reflect their influence on service quality. The research produces a set of appropriate service quality criteria suitable for evaluating hospitals' performance in a Chinese context. Meanwhile, the learning obtained from the research and the grouped criteria (quality performance indicators) can support consequential empirical research projects for obtaining more insights into running hospital businesses, and provide guidance to a wider range of Chinese hospitals on their business operations. They can also be used to guide foreign healthcare providers on developing/implementing their business management strategies while planning to enter the Chinese healthcare marketplace.