Information Technology and Service Quality in Health Care: An Empirical Study of Private Hospital in India

The development of the information technology has made a significant impact on healthcare service quality in India. Today, besides providing excellent clinical care, hospitals should also focus on providing quality service to their patients. Information Technology plays a vital role in enhancing the service quality in hospitals. The findings from the present study could provide useful information as to how hospitals could better manage their services and harness information technologies to enhance their services. A questionnaire survey was conducted on 210 patients those availed health services from a private hospital in Hyderabad, India. Customer satisfaction levels were measured using a Consumer Satisfaction Index (CSI) model. The research findings indicated that the CSI score for service quality in selected hospital is 75.87 out of a possible 100. The results show that there is still a lot of space for improvement in the hospital. Specifically, the hospital as a whole seems to be weak in factors such as; Communication, Promptness and Availability. An approach to apply IT in enhancing service quality in the hospitals is recommended based on the principles of efficiency and effectiveness.