EVALUATING HEALTHCARE PERFORMANCE USING FUZZY LOGIC

Abstract

The basic determining elements of healthcare services are the patient’s satisfaction with the service provided by hospitals, which includes behavioural and sentimental aspects and the quality and efficiency of the hospitals themselves. Patients are sometimes very confused, and so express their views very vaguely. These imprecise responses of patients add to the complexity of evaluating quality. The involvement of multiple criteria, uncertainty, and qualitative factors significantly complicates the evaluation of the quality of a healthcare service. Fuzzy logic is a method by which indistinct or hazy responses can be taken up for quality analysis, such as the prioritisation of hospitals, departments, dimensions, etc. A pilot study was carried out in this study comprising 18 private hospitals with more than 100 beds that were selected in the twin city of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack in the state of Odisha, India. Nine quality dimensions were also selected from those used in the literature. A questionnaire survey was conducted in different departments of the hospitals using the nine dimensions. Patients’ responses on a five-point Likert scale were first analysed statistically. Then ranking the dimensions and the hospitals was carried out using fuzzy analysis. The results could be used by healthcare service providers continually to improve their organisation.

Keywords

• healthcare service quality
• fuzzy logic
• prioritization