Service quality as predictors of patient satisfaction in Penang Private Hospitals

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the quality of healthcare services by investigating the factors affecting patient satisfaction and predictors in private hospitals in Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia based on three service quality dimensions of the SERVQUAL which Responsiveness, Reliability, and Tangibility. A modified SERVQUAL questionnaire was used using random sampling to gather the research data and the respondents are consisted of 204 public and outside patients who are prior to the onset of the investigation. Pilot test is conducted for 54 respondents and all the variables obtain Cronbach's Alpha more than 0.7 which is acceptable. Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) is used to evaluate data of this research. The results of the study revealed that the perceived healthcare services in private hospitals do not significantly vary. The dimension of responsiveness was rated the highest while tangibility was perceived as the least important of the three SERVQUAL dimensions applied in this study. Therefore, this research suggests to use more dimensions of service quality theories and bigger samplings to obtain better results and may be used to contribute in enhancing the quality of healthcare services of private hospitals in Penang, Malaysia and in other similar environments.