Evaluating the quality of Iran's Package of Essential Non-communicable (IraPEN) disease in the Eastern Health Center of Ahvaz: Viewpoints of the referring patients

Introduction: Service quality is a key factor in different organizations’ success, growth and access to better competitive positions. The quality of the services offered by the health system is accordingly of paramount importance because the major mission of any health system is protecting the health of communities. In this regard, assessing the views of clients about the quality of health care delivery has attracted such considerable scholarly attention that WHO has considered it at the heart of all policies and strategies for improving the quality of healthcare. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of Iran's Package of Essential Non-communicable (PEN) disease in the Eastern Health Center of Ahvaz, southwest of Iran, from the point of view of the referring patients in 2018. Methodology: The present study is descriptive-analytic in purpose and an applied research in terms of its results. The research population includes patients (aged 30 and above) who referred to the healthcare facilities covered by the Eastern Health Center of Ahvaz for receiving a set of essential interventions for non-communicable diseases. Based on the sample size formula, the number of samples was calculated to be 354 patients referring to the healthcare facilities covered by the Eastern Health Center of Ahvaz who were chosen by simple random selection. A standard SERVQUAL questionnaire was used to collect the data regarding the quality of services provided and those expected. Data analysis was performed by SPSS using paired t-test, one way ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficient and Spearman, followed by multiple linear regressions. Results: The results showed that there is a significant difference between the expected quality of services and the perceived services offered in the healthcare facilities studied. Overall, the quality of the services provided did not meet the expectations of the respondents. In this study, the widest gap was related to the quality of services in terms of the dimension of empathy (1.32) while the smallest was related to assurance (0.98). There was a significant linear relationship between the level of expected and perceived responsiveness among the subjects (p = 0.019). Also, there was a significant linear relationship between the expected assurance and the perceived responsiveness among the subjects (p =0.131). Conclusion: Service quality and customer satisfaction is an important part of the competitive advantages in the health care sector, and beyond a simple gap between expectation and perception of service quality, people may have a different understanding of primary health care, which in turn, affects their perceptions of service quality. Therefore, the management of health care quality should be oriented towards comprehensive optimization in all domains, and not be limited to areas that are recognized as a quality priority from the view of the clientele of a specific center.