Exploring perceptions of hospital operations by a modified SERVQUAL approach.

The authors employ a modified SERVQUAL approach to understanding the relationships among patients' perceptions of inpatient, outpatient, and emergency room services and their overall perceptions of service quality, satisfaction with their care, and willingness to recommend the hospital's services to others. Three models of these perceptions and related behavioral variables are developed. Dominating these models is a dimension labeled "patient confidence," which has a significant impact on nearly all measures of patient satisfaction.