A patient-focused service quality hierarchy for tertiary medical centers with the use of AHP

• Main Authors: Co, John Felipe, Tiu, Paul Erik, Ventura, Carl Anthony
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2009
• Subjects: Hospitals > Philippines > Metro Manila; Medical care > Philippines > Metro Manila; Patient satisfaction; Hospitals > Administration; Medical care > Decision making
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/7373
• Institution: De La Salle University

There is an increasing trend in the role of the healthcare industry as a driving factor of the economy. To ensure that the effectiveness of the healthcare system, various institutions produces measurement tools in order to determine the quality of the hospital. One of the more important quality indicators that are measured by the hospital is the perceived quality. The perceived quality is determined by how the public is measured by the hospital. In this sense, most hospitals do not have a consensus on what the determinants of perceived quality should be. This led to different measuring instruments in the form of hospital surveys which is directed to only measuring one quality indicator. This study addresses the problems of the differing measuring tools and basis for perceived quality by applying a methodology for measuring the perceived quality of the tertiary hospitals around metro manila through the use of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The AHP provides weights for each perceived quality component to determine its importance to the public. The results show that the main components of service quality should revolve around the following factors: process, content and outcome. The study included the insignificant factors in order to incorporate the contributions of all factors. Therefore the hierarchy for tertiary hospitals consists of the following components: Structure (18.35%), Content (23.44%), Process (23.47%), and Outcome (34.74). In line with the results, the study also created its own measurement tool that provides more focus to the components that were deemed important by the AHP which leads to a more patient-friendly, and patient-focus means of measuring perceived quality.