Service Quality Redefined: Public vs Private Hospitals from the Patients’ Perspectives

The service quality leads to customer satisfaction, therefore both are the inevitable strategic tools for a service firm in order to remain competitive and to sustain in the market. The healthcare firms compete primarily on service quality offered. The given study attempts to examine the various factors which lead to the satisfaction of customers towards the service quality offered by the healthcare firm. The study applies the SERVQUAL model (Parasuraman, 1985)¹⁷ for measuring the service quality being offered in private and public-hospitals of Jalandhar (Punjab) India.

The data has been collected from patients hospitalized in various hospitals in Jalandhar city. Factor analysis is used for data analysis. The findings revealed that customer satisfaction towards service quality of private-hospitals depends on assurance of services, responsiveness, trust and confidence, whereas for the public-hospitals the factors were tangibility and regularity of services followed by reliability of services and effectiveness of treatment.