Assessing service quality
If service quality is important to ascertain an
optimal level of patient satisfaction, then the
question that needs to be addressed here is how
it can be assessed. A widely accepted distinction
between dimensions of health care is the one that
considers the technical and the functional
aspects of a delivered service.4,8–11 Ware and
Snyder12 found that most patients could not
distinguish between functional and technical
aspects of the treatment. Accordingly, Soliman13
and Bowers et al.14 also found that nontechnical
aspects influenced patients ratings of
the overall quality of health care. As a result,
when it comes to the assessment of quality by
users, the manner in which health care is delivered
has been given more attention.4,8,11,13
A way of drawing a distinction between
patient satisfaction and the quality of service
delivered to the patients is by considering satisfaction
as an affective and the assessment of
quality as a cognitive state.15