A performance evaluation and comparison model for Urban Public Healthcare Service Quality (UrbPubHCServQual) by Fuzzy TOPSIS Method

ABSTRACT

We propose a conceptual performance evaluation and a comparison model to assess public-health-care-service quality in a fuzzy environment using the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). First, it aims to explore and validate service-quality measurement constructs for public-health-care services using a Likert scale. Second, the study evaluates and compares service quality for three urban public-health-care facilities from Gujarat, India, using fuzzy linguistic analysis with consideration of feedback from health-care experts. We carried out a two-stage data collection process involving, first, development of a questionnaire and gathering of responses from patients and, second, an advance supplementary questionnaire and collection of feedback from health-care experts for in-patient services. Responses from patients were split into two random samples for Urban Public Healthcare Service Quality (UrbPubHCServQual) scale construction and validation. We derived a six-construct measurement model and used this to development the advanced supplementary questionnaire. The advance supplementary questionnaire was evaluated by 15 health-care experts to enable us to compare the performance of three urban public health-care facilities. The result indicated a six-construct measurement model for evaluating public-health-care-service quality. The measurement model was validated with respect to three aspects: first, the factor loadings of the two samples showed a similar pattern; second, the coefficient alpha analysis brought the same result for two samples; and third, the percentage of variance explained by various constructs was similar in two samples. Applying TOPSIS, the service quality of urban public-health-care facilities was compared and ranked on the basis of proximity to the ideal solution.

KEYWORDS:

• Confirmatory factor analysis
• fuzzy TOPSIS
• public-health-care service quality
• scale construction
• scale validation

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the expert doctors from urban public health-care facilities who contributed their valuable time to improving understanding of the study topics and to offer data according to their best understanding of the subject matter.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.