Challenges in Measuring and Managing Quality in Health and Human Services Organizations

Service Quality Assessment of Workers' Compensation Health Care Delivery Programs in New York State Using SERVQUAL

“…SERVQUAL was ascertained to measure service quality in its application across four service organizations-banks, credit card companies, repair and maintenance and long-distance telephone companies. Content validity was also verified by key staff of the participating health and human services organizations (Selber 1998). Convergent validity was further established when scale items were able to predict similar responses.…”

“…Although SERVQUAL studies have determined varied numbers of dimensions depending on the research area and focus, the SERVQUAL instrument has been uniformly reliable and valid in measuring the service quality construct (Duffy, Duffy and Kilbourne 2001;O'Connor, Trinh and Shewchuk 2000;Selber 1998;McAlexander, Kaldenberg and Koening 1994;Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry 1988). SERVQUAL was ascertained to measure service quality in its application across four service organizations-banks, credit card companies, repair and maintenance and long-distance telephone companies.…”

“…The medical care component relates to medical diagnoses and treatment protocols, whereas health care encompasses medical, social, cognitive and emotional factors. Selber (1998) categorized users of health and human services into primary and secondary customer groups. Primary customers are the end-users or beneficiaries of the services, e.g., children and families, whereas the secondary customers are the other partners in the community network of services who are affected by the service, e.g., the suppliers and contracting agencies.…”

“…The second attempts to prod health professionals to create a culture of quality within their health care organizations. The demands from managed care plans include outcome-based accountability, cost containment and a customer-focused quality with the intention to remain competitive in a fluctuating environment (Selber 1998). When managed care programs were marketed as replacements for fee-for-service programs, they were offered as free-choice programs to employees.…”

Achieving Better Outcomes in a Managed Home Care Setting

“…Managed care has brought the elements of cost containment, customer service, and outcome-based accountability into the equation that defines the quality of home care services (Selber, 1998). Borrowed from the industrial sector, the aspects and measurements of quality in services provided and/or purchased by MCOs have been influenced by increased competition in the marketplace, expectations of quality related to MCOs' accreditation through demonstrated compli-ance with the National Committee on Quality Assurance's (NCQA) standards, as well as total quality management (TQM) and continuous quality management (CQM) principles and practices (Clafin & Hayden, 1998;Shaughnessy, 1995).…”