Quality, as assumption for patients' satisfaction

Aim To determine the significance of the perceived level of health care service quality and the influence of expectations to the level of the perceived quality in relation to technical and functional dimensions of service quality, as well as assessment of influence of expectations to the level of patients’ satisfaction. Methods During the research we formed six groups which included the patients who were submitted to diagnostic testing, who had laboratory tests done, who were hospitalized for internal disease treatments, who had undergone some sort of surgical operation, who were hospitalized at the department of gynecology and obstetrics, and who were provided with the services of medical rehabilitation for the purpose of conducting the interview with the examinees in the focus-groups. Results Testing has shown that there is a statistically significant influence of levels of non/confirmation of expectations, i.e. of the perceived quality to the level of patients’ satisfaction with the functional dimension of service quality, which will imply dissatisfaction with rehabilitation services, i.e. the perceived quality to the level of patients’ satisfaction with technical dimension of service quality, which implies dissatisfaction with surgical services. The results of the tests in other services show that there is not a statistically significant influence of levels of non/confirmation of expectations, i.e. the perceived technical and functional quality to the level of patients’ satisfaction, so it can be expected that they will express their satisfaction with other services provided. Conclusion Given that the expectations are higher than realization, the perceived quality is below patients’ expectations, which generates the service quality gap. This does not mean that the service is of low quality, but that patients’ expectations were not satisfied, which produces patients’ dissatisfaction, and therefore, the ways of providing the better quality rehabilitation and surgical services must be searched for.