Patient’s Expectations and Satisfactions toward Medical School of Public Hospital in Bangkok Metropolitan

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to study demographic factors that influence patient's expectations and satisfaction toward the medical school of a public hospital in Bangkok Metropolitan as well as to evaluate the service quality of those hospitals in 5 dimensions using the SERVQUAL model (Parasuraman, Berry, and Zeithaml, 1994: 110-124) as a guideline. Also, this study was intended to identify the key factors that influence the patients choosing a medical school in a public hospital in Bangkok. The researcher developed a structured and unstructured questionnaire to be served as research instruments and was applied to 600 respondents who had been the patients of 6 large-scale medical schools of public hospitals in Bangkok. Overall, the result has shown that the patient's level of expectation does exceed the patient's level of satisfaction in 5 factors at the level of significance of 0.05. Furthermore, it was found out that the most influential factors that affect the patients on choosing a medical school of a public hospital in Bangkok were the convenient access to the hospital, the reputation of the hospital, and the health care rights. While the least significant factor was the hospital had its own sub-specialty clinic. In the end, the researcher proposed the recommendation to the medical school of public hospitals to actualize marketing management through various ways and mediums in order to enhance the service quality.