Service quality assessments of international patients receiving service from a university hospital

Today, the intense competition brought by globalization, the rapid progress in information and technology, and the ease of access to information in every field, the increasing expectations affect all areas of our lives. The health sector is also one of the sectors most affected by these changes. As a consumer, human beings are much more sensitive, concerned and conscious about health than past. Patients are now going to health care facilities with some additional expectations besides treatment, and according to these expectations, they are evaluating the quality of the health-care service they receive. Health enterprises that follow the developments in science and technology and try to increase the quality of the services they offer by changing the diagnosis, treatment methods and the applications that make customers feel special competes for other business operating in the health sector in response to the increasingly conscious customer profile and increasing public expectations. Healthcare enterprises are obliged to adapt to new developments. In this context, the latest development is the "Health Tourism" which is emerged on the basis of globalization principle in health. Health tourism has become an area of intense competition among countries that want to increase their share in the international health market. Parallel to the shortening of the distance in the transportation field, the number of masses who want to travel in order to get cheap and high-quality services without waiting in medical and alternative medicine field is getting increased. Countries are trying to attract these requests. In this thesis, service quality was measured by SERVQUAL method for international patients receiving service from Hacettepe University Adult Hospital by emphasizing the necessity of measuring the existing quality level to increase the service quality. In this study, 102 international patients were reached in the Adult Hospital of Hacettepe University between December 2016 and May 2017. According to the hypothesis of the study, it is examined that the quality of service expectations and perceptions of these patients whether vary according to gender, age, educational status, marital status, income status and nationality. According to the results of the research, gender and age were not statistically significant, but statistically significant differences were found according to educational status and marital status. According to income status and nationality, only a significant difference was found in perceptions in terms of statistics.