Dear Editor-in-Chief
The success rate of all organizations irrespective of its nature, service oriented or product oriented; profit based or non-profit based; public or private, is influenced by many factors, where the most critical customer satisfaction is to achieve excellence in business (1). This study has attempted to understand the impact TQM practices in hospital management system where the customer expectation various with respect to the patient’s disease, personality, degree of criticality etc. Though quality has a long history in health care, in today’s scenario, increasing health costs, especially costs of treatment, have forced politicians and practioners to find novel ways to improve the quality of health system and make it more efficient (2). Rapid increase of health and treatment sector costs, especially relevant costs to the diagnosis and treatment throughout the world, caused experts including economists, managers and also physicians and nurses try to find modern methods to limit them among which TQM was one of critical methods to improve organizational efficiency and customer satisfaction level. Hence, the study attempted to examine the impact of TQM practices of Multispecialty hospitals located in Tamil Nadu, India.
The research design carried out for the present study was descriptive in nature. A self administered questionnaire of 39 variables to assess critical factors of TQM was used. The research applied non-probability sampling technique based on the convenience sampling method. The researcher conducted a survey among 160 customers selected from seven multispeciality hospitals located in India. The scales related to the TQM practices were coined based on TQM philosophies but with respect to customers knowledge and experience with the hospital (3, 4). The constructs regarding the quality of service were constructed based on literature support (5). The objectives of the study were to determine the critical factors of TQM and to determine the degree of relationship between the identified factors and the framework of the study includes, Cronbach alpha (reliability analysis), Factor Analysis and Correlation Analysis.
The study was found to have a reliable constructs with the overall reliability of 0.937, which inferred that, the analysis was reliable in nature. Twenty-nine variables taken in the questionnaire were tested for factor analysis and grouped under six factors namely, service cost, continuous review, procedures and regulations, accessibility, physical evidence and employee involvement. It was found that service cost was the critical one among the six factors. The factor service cost was significantly correlated with factors like continuous review, physical evidence and employee involvement, which shows that the cost of the service would affect the patient’s perception on the continuous review, physical evidence and the involvement of the employees in the hospital. Thus the research suggests factors influencing patient’s perception on TQM implementation in the hospitals and, it identified the relationship between the various TQM factors which enable the hospital management to understand that effective practice of TQM factors towards the satisfaction of the patients on the service of the hospital.
Acknowledgements
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests.
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