OBJECTIVES:

to measure the gap between patients’ expectations and perceptions about services delivered in pharmacy department.

METHODS:

A questionnaire concerning the perceived quality of health care sent to out-patients in pharmacy department, in a government hospital in Sleman district, Yogyakarta Province, Indonesia, during a period of 2016. Participants were two hundred patients aged 18 or older responded to the survey and provided their own ratings of the care. The SERVQUAL model was employed, consisting five main dimensions of service, are tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Description of respondent’s characteristics, quality dimensions and patient satisfaction was examined.

RESULTS: In our survey, 54% of patients were female and 46% male. Thirty-one percent of patients were 45-54 years old. Using servqual model we found a gap -0.487 with service quality mean score 2.938; (SD 1.16) and patient satisfaction mean score 3.425 (SD 0.54). Patients with less education were more satisfied than those with more education. Gaps existed between all five expectation categories and ‘overall perception’ of quality. The direction of the gaps indicated higher perceived quality than expected (all statistically significant) with responsiveness domain demonstrating the largest unfavourable gaps.

CONCLUSIONS: We found the SERVQUAL model to be useful in revealing differences between patients’ preferences and their actual experience in health care service quality.