Service Quality for Facilities Management in Hospitals

150 Pages·2016·1.802 MB·English

by  Low Sui Pheng, Zhu Rui (auth.)

Low Sui Pheng · Zhu Rui
Service Quality
for Facilities
Management
in Hospitals
Service Quality for Facilities Management
in Hospitals
Low Sui Pheng · Zhu Rui
Service Quality for Facilities
Management in Hospitals
1 3
Low Sui Pheng Zhu Rui
Department of Building Department of Building
National University of Singapore National University of Singapore
Singapore Singapore
Singapore Singapore
ISBN 978-981-10-0955-6 ISBN 978-981-10-0956-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0956-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937379
© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016
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Printed on acid-free paper
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The registered company is Springer Science+Business Media Singapore Pte Ltd
Contents
1 Introduction ................................................ 1
1.1 Background ............................................ 1
1.2 Research Problems ....................................... 3
1.3 Research Aims and Objectives .............................. 4
1.4 Research Hypothesis ..................................... 4
1.5 Significance of Study ..................................... 4
1.6 Structure of Book ........................................ 5
References .................................................. 5
2 Facilities Management and Singapore’s Healthcare System ......... 9
2.1 Definition and Development of Facilities Management ........... 9
2.2 FM Service Coverage ..................................... 12
2.3 Singapore’s Healthcare System ............................. 14
2.4 Hospital FM ............................................ 15
2.5 Key Aspects Contributing to Successful FM/Hospital FM ........ 18
2.6 Summary of Chapter ..................................... 21
References .................................................. 21
3 SERVQUAL, the Kano Model and QFD ......................... 25
3.1 Service Quality: Approaches and Measurements ................ 25
3.2 GAP Model and SERVQUAL .............................. 28
3.3 Applications of SERVQUAL in FM ......................... 30
3.4 Service Quality in Hospitals and Hospital FM .................. 33
3.5 Kano Model ............................................ 36
3.6 Quality Function Deployment .............................. 39
3.7 The Integration of SERVQUAL, the Kano Model and QFD ....... 43
3.8 Summary of Chapter ..................................... 51
References .................................................. 51
4 Conceptual Framework ...................................... 57
4.1 Applying Service Quality Theory in Hospital FM Context ........ 57
4.2 Integrating SERVQUAL, the Kano Model and QFD
for Quality Improvement and Customer Satisfaction ............. 60
v
vi Contents
4.3 Conceptual Framework ................................... 61
4.4 Summary of Chapter ..................................... 63
References .................................................. 63
5 Research Methodology ....................................... 65
5.1 Research Design ......................................... 65
5.2 Data Collection Methods .................................. 67
5.3 Data Analysis Methods .................................... 71
5.4 Summary of Chapter ..................................... 72
References .................................................. 72
6 Data Analysis ............................................... 73
6.1 Data Analysis for SERVQUAL Questionnaire Survey ........... 73
6.2 Data Analysis for Kano Questionnaire Survey .................. 81
6.3 Data Analysis for QFD .................................... 86
6.4 Summary of Chapter ..................................... 86
Reference ................................................... 89
7 Discussion .................................................. 91
7.1 SERVQUAL Survey Findings Discussion ..................... 91
7.2 Kano Survey Findings Discussion ........................... 96
7.3 QFD Survey Findings Discussion ........................... 99
7.4 Summary of Chapter ..................................... 103
Reference ................................................... 104
8 Conclusions ................................................ 105
8.1 Validation of Hypothesis and Summary of Findings ............. 105
8.2 Recommendations ....................................... 106
8.3 Validation of Findings and Recommendations .................. 109
8.4 Contributions ........................................... 110
8.5 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research ............... 111
Appendix A: Survey on Service Quality of Facilities Management
in Singapore’s Hospitals .............................. 113
Appendix B: Survey on Facilities Management Services in Singapore’s
Hospitals .......................................... 115
Appendix C: Q uality Function Deployment Survey on Facilities
Management Services in Singapore’s Hospitals .......... 119
Appendix D: The QFD Survey Data and Results (HOQ) .............. 145
Abbreviations
AH Alexandra Hospital
BIFM British Institute of Facilities Management
CGH Changi General Hospital
CR Customer Requirements
DR Design Requirements
FM Facilities Management
HOQ House of Quality
IFMA International Facility Management Association
IMH Institute of Mental Health
KKH Kandang Kerbau Women’s and Children’s Hospital
KTPH Khoo Teck Puat Hospital
MRT Mass Rapid Transit
NHC National Heart Centre
NUH National University Hospital
PEAT Patient Environment Assessment Team
PUB Public Utilities Board
QFD Quality Function Deployment
SGH Singapore General Hospital
STB Singapore Tourism Board
TTSH Tan Tock Seng Hospital
vii
List of Figures
Figure 2.1 The FM basic framework ............................... 10
Figure 2.2 Hospital soft FM services coverage ....................... 17
Figure 3.1 GAP model ......................................... 29
Figure 3.2 Extended Gap model .................................. 31
Figure 3.3 Overview of the Kano model ............................ 38
Figure 3.4 The structure of HOQ ................................. 40
Figure 3.5 Framework for integrating SERVQUAL and the Kano
model .............................................. 44
Figure 3.6 Framework for integrating SERVQUAL, the Kano model
and QFD ............................................ 45
Figure 4.1 Conceptual framework ................................. 62
Figure 6.1 Respondents’ age distribution in the SERVQUAL survey ...... 74
Figure 6.2 Respondents’ gender distribution in the SERVQUAL survey ... 74
Figure 6.3 Respondents’ race distribution in the SERVQUAL survey ..... 75
Figure 6.4 Respondents’ educational background distribution in the
SERVQUAL survey ................................... 75
Figure 6.5 Respondents’ age distribution in the Kano survey ............ 83
Figure 6.6 Respondents’ gender distribution in the Kano survey ......... 83
Figure 6.7 Respondents’ race distribution in the Kano survey ........... 84
Figure 6.8 Respondents’ educational background distribution
in the Kano survey .................................... 84
ix
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Typical FM services ................................... 13
Table 2.2 Classification of FM services ............................ 13
Table 2.3 Singapore’s public hospitals ............................. 14
Table 2.4 Singapore’s private hospitals ............................. 15
Table 2.5 FM operations in healthcare sector ........................ 16
Table 2.6 Key aspects contributing to successful FM .................. 18
Table 3.1 The SERVQUAL Instrument presented by Zeithaml
et al. (1990) .......................................... 30
Table 3.2 FM related factors in hospital service quality research ......... 35
Table 3.3 Kano evaluation table .................................. 38
Table 3.4 Summary on literature review of the integration method ....... 50
Table 4.1 Service attributes identified .............................. 58
Table 4.2 Solutions for closing service gaps ......................... 59
Table 5.1 Service attributes used in the SERVQUAL questionnaire ...... 69
Table 6.1 Cronbach’s α test for expectation ......................... 76
Table 6.2 Cronbach’s α test for perception .......................... 76
Table 6.3 Expectation score distribution-1 .......................... 77
Table 6.4 Expectation score distribution-2 .......................... 78
Table 6.5 Perception score distribution-1 ........................... 79
Table 6.6 Perception score distribution-2 ........................... 80
Table 6.7 Gap scores for the service attributes ....................... 81
Table 6.8 Results from Mann–Whitney U tests ...................... 82
Table 6.9 Mann–Whitney U Test for P4 and P18 ..................... 82
Table 6.10 Results from Kano categorisation ......................... 85
Table 6.11 The importance scores of WHATs ........................ 87
Table 6.12 The HOWs and their codes in QFD ....................... 87
Table 6.13 The importance scores of HOWs and their relative rankings .... 89
Table 7.1 The importance scores of attributes and their relative
rankings ............................................. 98
Table 8.1 Top 10 factors for continuous improvement in FM ............ 107
xi
Summary
As a relatively new discipline, facilities management (FM) has developed rapidly
over the past 30 years as the volume of built assets ballooned exponentially. One
topic that draws a lot of attention in the FM domain is customer satisfaction that
emanates from good service quality. Enhancing customer satisfaction has recently
become one of the major concerns of FM organisations. Customer satisfaction can
be viewed as a result of the demand for high service quality. It can be enhanced
only if the service quality level increases. Thus, service providers who seek to sat-
isfy their customers should enhance their service quality level first, which is within
their control. But before that can happen, it is essential to measure the service
quality first, so that areas that need improvements can then be identified, to be fol-
lowed by implementation of corrective actions, leading to the increased level of
customer satisfaction.
Among various organizations, special attention is given in this book to hospital
FM because hospitals and healthcare facilities belong to the most complex, costly
and challenging kind of buildings to manage. Although FM is identified as a key
function in hospitals, the number of studies that were concentrated on hospital FM
has so far been limited. Furthermore, it is acknowledged that customer satisfaction
is of key importance to FM. Since patients are the key customers in hospitals, tak-
ing a patient-oriented approach to FM service quality in hospitals is essential to
improve the overall patients’ satisfaction level.
Given this background, it is natural to raise the questions of how do we evalu-
ate the FM service quality in hospitals and how do we improve and maintain the
service quality standard. This book presents and evaluates the FM service qual-
ity standards in Singapore’s hospitals from the patient’s perspective. In addition, it
provides and recommends effective ways to improve FM service quality to better
achieve patient satisfaction. The uniqueness of this book is that in fulfilling this
aim, the approach adopted combines service quality and quality theory to pro-
vide a more holistic view of how FM service quality can be achieved in hospitals.
This book integrates three instruments; namely the SERVQUAL model, the Kano
model and the QFD model to yield empirical results from surveys for implementa-
tion in hospitals.
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