Assessing the quality of health care: a consumerist approach

Recent investigations show that nontechnical interventions influence patients' ratings of the quality of health care, and that these aspects of the medical encounter are as important to the patient as the technical aspects; perhaps more important. This paper adopts a consumerist approach and measures patients' perceptions of health care quality using a scale adapted from the consumer behavior literature (SERVQUAL). The study measures health care quality as well as five of its individual dimensions. The findings indicate that, for the whole sample, patients' ratings of overall quality as well as the ratings of four of the five dimensions of care are negative. Further analysis indicates that many individual aspects (scale items) are rated negatively by each of two age groups (25-65 and over 65 years old), but the gap between perceptions of the younger group and their expectations is greater than that of the senior group. The two dimensions of "assurance" and "empathy" are found to be the most discriminating dimensions between the two groups. Other analyses indicate that age, annual household income, and work status significantly relate to overall quality rating. Marketing and strategic planning implications of the results are discussed.