Impact Of Quality Service Quality In The Healthcare Industry

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1.1 INTRODUCTION:
The health care industry is one among the fastest growing industries. It provides goods and services which helps to treat patients with curative, rehabilitative, preventive and palliative care. Equentis report said that the healthcare sector is growing at a 15 per cent CAGR and increased to USD 78.6 billion in 2012 and expected further increase to USD 158.2 billion by 2017. The factors behind the growth is rising in income level, easy access to healthcare facilities that are of high quality and awareness of personal health and hygiene. Even though there is growth in healthcare sector there are certain factors that are used to measure the quality of service in healthcare industry namely the hospitals.
The liberalization and globalization policies of India has resulted in significant change in the health care scenario. Due to increasing awareness, the patients as consumers expect high quality in healthcare services. Quality is considered to be as an important factor when customers choose hospitals (Schuler and Lynch, 1990).
Service quality can be divided into two components namely technical quality and functional quality (Gronroos, 1984: Parasuraman et al., 1985: Lewis and Mitchel, 1990). Technical quality is defined on the basis of procedures and technical accuracy. Functional quality is defined as the manner in which the delivery of service is made to the customer. In health care industries, patients generally consider the functional aspects such as facilities, cleanliness, hospital personnels attitudes etc., rather than the technical aspects (Babakus and Boller, 1991).
The research presents the results of gap that exist between the patient’s perception of service quality and management expectation on the quali...

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... and health insurance is expected to reach US$ 160 billion by 2017, as per the reports of Frost & Sullivan. India has tremendous growth in the health care industry with its expansion in both the private and the public sectors. According to a report by Grant Thornton India, the Indian medical device and equipment market is expected to grow around US$ 7.8 billion by 2016.
According to recent studies conducted, the patients have aspirations that are changing. Customers are becoming aware of their health needs, demand less waiting time for their service, quick response, and better quality of service and availability of healthcare units nearby. These factors results in immense opportunity for the healthcare industries to set their foot prints in India. Reports from Mckinsy and IDFC state that Indian Healthcare Industry will be worth of US$ 125 billion by 2019.

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