Managing Health Care Service Quality in a Primary Health Care Centre

Abstract

This work is the extension of the earlier research work (Sharma and Chahal, 2003 and Sharma and Chahal, 1999) done on consumer satisfaction in public health system. There is a need to identify and implement effective and exploratory strategies that can overcome the attributes responsible for the tarnished image of rural primary health care centres. The purpose of the study is two-fold. First, the paper measures the level of service quality of a rural primary health centre through a tested, selfdeveloped, five-point Likert scale from patients' judgment and has highlighted the problem faced by the patients. The responses have been integrated into important factors on the basis of responses by applying factor analysis after verifying the validity and reliability of the instrument. Second, suitable strategies for enhancing patients' satisfaction and service quality for the policy makers and health care units have been formulated using the exploratory empirical data. The strategic implications, limitations and future research focus needed are also discussed.