Abstract:
All service providers strive to attain superior service quality (SQ), since the demand for
provision of high quality customer focused services is constantly rising. In the healthcare
sector, it becomes of utmost importance to understand consumer expectations and their
needs to effectively remain competitive in the market. Increase in the per capita income
of clients has made them increase their aspiration level to demand enhanced quality
services. Currently, hospitals in Nairobi City County (NCC) in Kenya, do not offer
services to patients based on their aspirations and in the process, they lose clients. There
is need for hospital administrators to determine how patients perceive healthcare quality
service, and employ techniques that match their expectations. This is probable by using
patients to evaluate their services based on identified criteria. Human evaluations are
normally imprecise thus uncertainty aspects should be integrated in the evaluation
process. Techniques employed should be able to handle the subjective nature of human
evaluators. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) model has been designed to analyze
the service quality in the healthcare sector based on SERVQUAL dimensions. The model
is capable of handling the uncertainty and vagueness involved in the mapping of one’s
preference to an exact number or ratio. It has been used to measure the SQ of four
hospitals from NCC by computing the priority of each of the dimensions of healthcare SQ
8/3/2020 Towards Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process Model for Performance Evaluation of Healthcare Sector Services |
attributes. The priority is then used for ranking the best hospital from the patient’s
perspective. Hospital managers can use the results of this assessment as a basis of
employing strategies that would ensure they provide quality services to patients.
