A case study of applying importance-performance analysis in orthopedic department to evaluate service quality

A case study of evaluating service quality of orthopedic department at a regional hospital located in central Taiwan is presented. The questionnaire was designed based on SERVQUAL model with 22 items. In addition, importance-performance analysis (IPA) was applied to identify the major strengths and weaknesses in this study. For the degree of importance, physicians' expertise has the highest importance but neat dressed staff is the least important item. In contrast to importance, physicians' expertise has the highest performance rating, while convenient transportation and parking convenience receives the lowest performance rating from patients' points of view. To further applying IPA to identify major strengths and weaknesses, the results show that there is no major weakness at orthopedic department, while there are nine major strengths from patients' viewpoints. Therefore, these nine major strengths mainly belonging to tangibility should be maintained to gain competitive advantage.