Service quality improvement with fuzzy quality function deployment in a university hospital

Parallel to the growth in the health sector, the number of hospitals and the number of patients going to these hospitals are increasing day by day in the world and in our country. This situation causes intense competition among health institutions providing health services. In such an environment, healthcare managers prefer patient-focused strategies to ensure patient satisfaction in order to be successful. With the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method, which is one of the patient-oriented Total Quality Management applications, healthcare managers can determine the requests, needs and expectations of their patients and can offer a high quality service that meets or exceeds these requests, needs and expectations. The aim of this study is to perform a QFD application integrated with fuzzy logic and modified SERVQUAL scale by listening to the voice of the patients, in order to design the services suitable for the needs and needs of the patients. In this context, a QFD application was carried out with the participation of 417 patients who were staying in a university hospital operating in the province of Denizli. After listening the voice of the patients, the technical requirements were determined to meet the requests, needs and expectations of the patients. At the end of the study, a modified SERVQUAL scale consisting of 37 statements and 8 dimensions was developed and the quality house was constructed from the data obtained from this scale. The most important inpatient requests for the hospital where the research was conducted were determined to be taking care of the attendants' comfort and accommodation conditions, serving delicious dishes to patients and adequate ventilation of the patient rooms, respectively. The most important of these patient requests belongs to the dimension of privacy and comfort of the developed scale. The most important technical requirements determined by the QFD team to increase the number of staff working in the hospital, periodical maintenance and control of technical service and providing education about communication to the staff of the hospital.