Service Quality of Private Hospitals in India An Empirical Study on Arab Patients Perspective

Abstract

Arab patients have reported an increasing number in Indian hospitals, highlighting the importance of Arab patients to the Indian medical tourism sector and the Indian economic development as well. However, there are a very limited number of studies concerning the perceptions of Arab patients, as reflected by the existing research gap in literature. Hence, this study has made an attempt to fill up this gap. The current study aims to examine Arab patients perceptions of Service Quality Dimensions, Hospital Charges, Patient s Choice of Hospital and Patient s Satisfaction in Indian private hospitals, as one of the best medical tourism destinations in the world. In order to do that, an extensive literature review relevant to the healthcare services has been made. It has been found that these are four key variables, as concepts relevant to the improvement of the performance and competitive advantage of hospitals. Thus, these four variables were combined into the proposed conceptual framework of this study. To examine the relations among these variables, the research questions and hypotheses were framed and tested. The demographic variables of Arab patients have been statistically analyzed to identify the difference among these variables with respect to the hypothetical variables. A suitable methodology, including research design, proper statistical techniques such as ANOVA, t-Test, and SEM analysis (the software package SPSS version 20 and AMOS version 20) were employed to analyze the collected data and examine the research hypotheses. The measurement and structural of the proposed model were well validated. Hospital Charges were the mediating variable in the proposed model and it was found that Hospital Charges influenced Patient s Satisfaction only. The role played by Service Quality Dimensions seems to hold much greater importance in comparison to Hospital Charges in terms of influencing Patient s Choice of Hospitals and Patient s Satisfaction. newline