Hospital Services Quality from Patients’ viewpoint in Iran: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background: The identification of strengths and weaknesses of services providedis the first step for the improvement of the quality of services. In hospitals, patientsare the most important groups for the evaluation of the quality of healthcareservices. Thus, this systematic review and meta-analysis aims to evaluate hospitalservice quality from patients’ perspective in Iran using Servqual model.Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies evaluating patients’perspective about hospital services quality was conducted. Required data werecollected through searching following key words: Servqual, services quality, gap,hospital, patients, Iran, using the database sources including PubMed, Scopus,Google Scholar, MagIran, SID and IranMedex. Comprehensive meta-analysis(CMA) software, Version 2 was used to estimate the total mean score of patients’perception and expectation of services quality and the gap between them.Results: Totally, 11 eligible studies were entered into the systematic review. Basedon the random effect model, the total mean score of patients’ perception, patients’expectation and the gap between them were estimated 3.66 (95% CI, lowest = 3.40,highest = 3.92), 4.62 (95% CI, lowest = 4.42, highest = 4.82) and 0.94 (95% CI,lowest = 0.78, highest = 1.10), respectively. The mean score of the gap betweenperception and expectation was 0.95 and the biggest gap was related to theresponsiveness dimension.Conclusion: Responsiveness is related to the areas, such as providing appropriateand timely services, the reliability of providers, good communication between staffor physicians and patients. The importance of these areas signifies the necessity oftaking actions in order to provide more appropriate and higher quality services.

Keywords:

Hospital Service Quality , Systematic Review , Meta-Analysis