This study aimed to evaluate the service quality in Iranian hospitals from patients' perspectives based on the SERVQUAL model.

A thorough exploration of online electronic databases, including Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, IranMedex, and the Scientific Information Database (SID), was undertaken using keywords extracted from Medical Subject Headings such as "Quality of Health Care," "Hospital," and "Patients" spanning from the earliest available records up to August 11, 2023.

In the context of 25 cross-sectional studies encompassing a collective participant pool of 8021 hospitalized patients in Iranian medical facilities, an assessment of patients' perspectives on the quality of hospital services revealed a mean perception score of 3.54 (SE = 0.08). Concurrently, the mean expectation score for the quality of services was determined to be 4.43 (SE = 0.06). Using the SERVQUAL model, the overall disparity between patients' perceptions and expectations was calculated as -0.89. Subsequent examination of specific dimensions within the SERVQUAL framework revealed gaps between patients' perceptions and expectations in the tangibility dimension (-0.84), reliability dimension (-0.94), responsiveness dimension (-0.91), assurance dimension (-0.89), and empathy dimension (-0.82).

Therefore, healthcare administrators consider the study's findings as a motivating force to initiate measures aimed at improving service quality in Iranian hospitals. Tackling the recognized shortcomings and areas requiring enhancement holds the promise of raising patient satisfaction levels and, consequently, improving overall healthcare outcomes.

In today's competitive world, especially in critical situations, dental clinic managers seek to retain customers and allocate more market share. The importance-performance analysis (IPA) technique is a powerful diagnostic tool that helps managers identify fundamental deficiencies, establish priorities and provide insights into which service improvement areas managers should focus on. This study aimed to improve the quality of life of patients at the Alborz Dental Clinic based on their perception of safe services during the coronavirus pandemic using IPA.

In this analytical cross-sectional study, 324 patients referred to at Alborz Dental Clinic from April 2021 to February 2022 were enrolled in the study through simple random sampling. The data collection tool used was a researcher-designed questionnaire based on the indicators of the quality improvement model and the guidelines of the Ministry of Health, Medical Education and Health of Iran regarding the provision of dental services in the context of COVID-19, the validity and reliability of which were measured. The gap analysis results and determination of areas of improvement were obtained using IPA. The data analysis was performed using SPSS26 and Excel software.

The results of the paired ttest showed that the difference between importance and performance for all the research variables was significant (significance level less than 5%).The importance of the components exceeded their performance. The deepest gap among the five components of the model was related to accountability. IPA revealed that two variables, reliability and responsiveness, are placed in quadrant A, and three variables, tangibility, assurance, and empathy, are placed in quadrant B.

To improve the quality of safe services, dental clinic managers need to pay attention to the three dimensions of "tangibility", "assurance" and "empathy" and plan and make decisions about the two dimensions of "reliability" and "responsiveness".

To explore the perspectives of nursing managers in Korean hospitals on the Magnet Recognition Program using importance-performance analysis.

A descriptive quantitative cross-sectional design with a survey methodology was used to evaluate nursing managers' perceptions of the Magnet Recognition Program criteria.

After the Magnet Recognition Program's content validity was confirmed, an online survey was administered to 150 nursing managers from 10 hospitals. The results were analysed using importance-performance analysis.

The average importance of the questionnaire for the developed Magnet Recognition Program criteria was 3.19 ± 135 and the performance was 2.90 ± 222. Items corresponding to the areas 'Concentrate here', 'Keep up the good work', 'Possible overkill' and 'Low priority' were identified using two importance-performance analysis frames. The items corresponding to 'Concentrate here' included evidence-based nursing practice, the nursing professional practice model, nurses' participation in improving turnover rate and cases of innovation in nursing.

This study highlights areas for improvement within the Magnet Recognition Program as perceived by Korean nursing managers, emphasizing evidence-based practice, professional models and nurses' involvement in turnover reduction and fostering innovation.

To achieve Magnet recognition, hospitals must understand nursing managers' perspectives on the Magnet Recognition Program criteria. This study provides insights into enhancing the work environment for nurses in South Korean hospitals and lays the groundwork for developing effective Magnet certification programs. Introducing the Magnet program into South Korean hospitals may improve the overall nursing work environment and mitigate the serious problem of nursing staff turnover.

The findings were reported using the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) checklist.

Understanding patient's preferences is important to delivering good quality services. Patients' feedback provides healthcare providers with valuable information about the services provided. The increasing number of international students enrolling in Hungarian Universities raises the need to ensure the quality of services meets international students' requirements, which includes healthcare. This study aimed to assess service quality in the University Health Center (UHC) from the international student's point of view to be used to improve the quality of services.

This cross-sectional study was conducted at the university health center. We used a mixed methods approach to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. We used the importance-performance analysis (IPA) for quantitative analysis to understand expectations and perceptions in service research. The qualitative analysis was conducted from responses to reflection questions. The qualitative data were then analyzed using thematic analysis.

437 international students participated in the study, but only 402 (91.99%) were analysed. The gaps between the importance and performance of service quality were negative in all dimensions (P-value < 0.001). This suggests that there is an unmet need for student expectations and university health center performance. From the Importance factor, the highest and lowest were related to safety (4.54 ± 0.56) and efficiency (4.31 ± 0.66) dimensions. The Performance factor's highest and lowest mean scores were also related to safety (4.22 ± 0.72) and efficiency (3.91 ± 0.87), respectively. From qualitative analysis, there are two major themes several secondary themes from the thematic analysis of free-text responses were identified.

The importance and performance analysis could provide useful information to university policymakers about university health center service quality. There is a need for improvement and obviating the importance-performance gaps, especially in the efficiency dimension. Decision-makers can use the IPA analysis results to allocate limited resources more effectively, giving special attention to possible organizational weaknesses for further direction.

Service quality improvement efforts must focus on the utilisation of resources for continuous quality improvement. The importance-performance analysis (IPA) method is useful in finding service quality items that require corrective action. This study implemented the IPA method to obtain items that should be prioritised in improving the quality of a hospital's clinical forensic services.

A cross-sectional study of 284 clinical forensic patients at Bhayangkara Hospital, Pekanbaru, Indonesia was conducted. Self-administered and paper-based questionnaires, specifically the modified service quality (SERVQUAL)-based questionnaire, were used as the study instruments. Twenty-two service quality items were used as indicators and they were divided into five dimensions of service quality: i) reliability, ii) responsiveness, iii) assurance, iv) empathy and v) tangibility. The data were analysed using the IPA method.

The results showed that only seven items had a gap and a level of conformity that met the expectations of clinical forensic patients. Improvements in service quality should prioritise four items: i) providing a more private examination room for clinical forensic patients, ii) improving healthcare workers' understanding of patient needs, iii) improving the readiness of healthcare workers to conduct examinations and iv) enhancing the clarity of information about examination procedures.

The IPA method yielded several high-priority items that need to be improved; therefore, the hospital must focus on improving the quality of clinical forensic services.

Assessing the quality of health services gives insights to managers about the status of services delivered by them, especially from the client's perspective. Although various tools have been developed to measure the quality of primary health care (PHC), no specific tool was found in this field in Iran. Therefore, the present study was conducted to develop and validate the quality assessment tool of PHC in Iran.

This methodological study was conducted in 2021. In the first step, based on a literature review, an initial questionnaire was designed, and its face validity, content validity, construct validity, and reliability were evaluated. Descriptive tests, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, exploratory factor analysis, Kaiser-Myer-Olkin (KMO), and Cronbach's alpha were performed by using SPSS 22.

The initial questionnaire included 33 items, of which three items were removed due to inconsistency with factorization. The final questionnaire consisted of 30 items and nine dimensions: interaction, efficiency, timeliness, accuracy, consultation, tangibility, safety, accessibility, and environment. The KMO and Cronbach's alpha index values were 0.734 and 0.82, respectively, indicating acceptable reliability and validity. The developed dimensions represented about 73% of the total variance.

The designed questionnaire has relatively good validity and reliability and can be used to measure the quality of PHC and to identify weaknesses in service delivery. However, researchers should carefully examine it to enhance its applicability as a standard tool for measuring PHC quality.

Quality healthcare services are considered one of the most effective vehicles for healthcare managers to achieve organizational goals. Therefore, this study aimed to combine the findings of comparable studies to identify consistencies and contradictions in the quality of outpatient services in Iran.

The current systematic review and meta-analysis study was conducted in 2022 according to PRISMA guideline. All relevant English and Persian studies were searched in databases, including Web of Sciences, PubMed, Scopus, Scientific Information Database, and Magiran. No year restriction was applied. The quality of the studies was assessed by the 22-item Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology checklist. The meta-analysis was conducted by using Open Meta Analyst, and between-study heterogeneity was investigated with I-squared statistic.

Of the 106 retrieved articles, seven studies with a total sample size of 2600 were included in the meta-analysis. The pooled estimate of mean for overall perception was 3.95 (95% CI: 3.34- 4.55, P< 0.001, I2= 99.97), while the pooled estimate of the mean for the overall expectation was 4.43 (95% CI: 4.11- 4.75, P< 0.001, I2= 99.93). The highest and lowest perception mean scores were related to tangibility (3.52, Gap= -0.86) and responsiveness (3.30, Gap= -1.04) dimensions.

Responsiveness was identified as the weakest dimension. Therefore, managers are recommended to design suitable workforce-development programs which focus on the provision of timely and prompt services, polite and courteous interactions with patients, and prioritization of patients' needs. Moreover, training public sector practitioners along with incentives can fill up the existing gaps.