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Evaluation of expected and perceived of quality of service with the SERVQUAL scale: The case of a private physical therapy and rehabilitation center

Purpose: Quality of service is one of the important factors that influence the success of enterprises operating in the health sector. Besides enterprises providing products, the enterprises providing services are also affected by competition in today’s world, in which competition increases rapidly and competition conditions become more difficult every day. Therefore, it can be said that increasing quality of service is one of the ways of gaining a strategic competitive advantage.

Subjects and Methods: This study was conducted on patients receiving service from a private physical therapy and rehabilitation centre located Ankara, Turkey. The SERVQUAL scale, which measures quality of service, was used in the study. An attempt was made to evaluate the quality of the service provided by the private physical therapy and rehabilitation center based on the expectations of the center’s customers. The research sample consisted of 122 patients receiving services at Kuantum Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Center.

Results: The obtained results indicated that in private physical therapy and rehabilitation center, physical appearance represents an important dimension of the quality of service. Although the patients received higher quality service in terms of this dimension than they expected, the expectations of the patients related to the sensitivity of dimension were not satisfied.

Conclusion: The study also showed that sociodemographic characteristics such as level of income and level of education, reasons for choosing the private physical therapy and rehabilitation center and the patients’ pretreatment and posttreatment daily lives are influence the perceived quality of service and each dimension of quality.