COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PRIMARY HEALTH CARE SERVICES

There is significant number of dimensions and attributes that could describe and define quality of health care services, which illustrates multidimensionality of its structure. Therefore, managing the quality of health services represents a constant challenge, focusing on measurement quality and user satisfaction. The aim of the paper is comparing expectations and perceptions of the health care service users as well as the gaps for different dimensions of health care quality. For that purpose, a SERVQUAL model has been used, adapted to the needs of the health care sector. Empirical research was carried out on the basis of collecting primary data, by using testing method, via highly structured questionnaire that contained a Likert 5-point scale. The data collection was performed on a stratified sample. A research included 300 respondents in the primary health care institutions. Finally, based on the results of the empirical research, we confirmed that the research hypothesis is the following statement:, There is a statistically significant difference between the average rating of expectations and the average rating of perceptions of health service users in the primary health care institutions".