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The study applies the principles behind the SERVQUAL model and uses Donabedian’s framework to compare and contrast Malta’s public and private hospital care service quality. Through the identification of 16 service quality indicators and the use of a Likert‐type scale, two questionnaires were developed. The first questionnaire measured patient pre‐admission expectations for public and private hospital service quality (in respect of one another). It also determined the weighted importance given to the different service quality indicators. The second questionnaire measured patient perceptions of provided service quality. Results showed that private hospitals are expected to offer a higher quality service, particularly in the “hotel services”, but it was the public sector that was exceeding its patients’ expectations by the wider margin. A number of implications for public and private hospital management and policy makers were identified.

Saudi Arabian hospital performance, vis‐à‐vis patient satisfaction with service provision, has emerged as a key policy and planning concern. Keeping in view public and private hospital service quality, this article seeks to provide guidelines to the on‐going Saudi Arabian health service reorganization, which emphasizes decentralization, bed‐capacity expansion, research‐based policymaking and initiatives in the health insurance sector.

The article outlines an empirical study that compares patient satisfaction with service quality in Saudi Arabian public and private sector hospitals. The authors employ a stratified random sample (1,000 inpatients) from five Saudi Arabian public and five private hospitals. Data were collected through questionnaire using the SERVQUAL scale. For reducing the language bias the questionnaire was translated into Arabic. The response rate was 74.9 percent. Data were analyzed using SPSS and appropriate descriptive and inferential statistical techniques.

Cronbach's alpha for five service‐quality dimensions (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, safety and empathy) were high and the SERVQUAL instrument proved to be reliable, valid and appropriate. The results showed that sex, education, income and occupation were statistically significant in influencing inpatients' satisfaction, and all the null hypotheses were rejected. Only inpatient age was not significant.

The study highlights service quality influence in the design of broader healthcare strategies for Saudi Arabian public and private hospitals. It demands that management researchers and analysts must identify regional service quality consistencies and related inpatient demographic indicators.

The study offers some insights into, and guidance for, hospital quality assurance in Saudi Arabia in general and the urban hospital setting in the Middle‐East in particular.

The growth of the healthcare industry since the middle of the nineteenth century has offered medical doctors a broad range of opportunities to develop their private practice. However, a major challenge was accessing the new medical technology at the core of this growth, as operation rooms, X-ray machines, laboratories and sterilization equipment were mostly centred in hospitals. Based on the case of Geneva, Switzerland, this chapter discusses the various strategies adopted by medical doctors to benefit from hospital infrastructure for their work. It demonstrates that collective entrepreneurship emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, when groups of doctors started to open collective clinics in response to the impossibility of using the infrastructure of the local public hospital linked to the University of Geneva. This heyday of collective private clinics lasted until the 1990s when listed companies and private investors took over and reorganized these private healthcare organizations.

This chapter draws on a study conducted in the mid 1990s to compare management differences between three different groups of South African hospitals, in order to understand how these differences might have affected hospital functioning. The groups were public hospitals; contractor hospitals publicly funded but privately managed; and private hospitals owned and run by private companies. Public sector structures made effective management difficult and were highly centralized, with hospital managers enjoying little autonomy. In contrast, contractor and private groups emphasised efficient management and cost containment. These differences appeared to be reflected in cost and quality differences between the groups. The findings suggest that in the context of a country such as South Africa, with a relatively well-developed private sector, there is potential for the government to profit from the management expertise in the private sector by identifying lessons for its own management structures, and by contracting-out service management.

The purpose of this paper is to assess both private and public organizations in order to compare the similarities and differences between the organizational priority logic of TBL elements. The research objective is, therefore, to describe the organizational logic, so as to prioritize between economic, social and environmental elements of the triple bottom line (TBL). The approach is also to describe the common denominators and differentiators between private and public organizations.

Based on judgmental sampling and in-depth interviews of executives at private and public hospitals in Spain. Data were collected from the directors of communication of private hospitals, and from the executive in charge of corporate social responsibility of public hospitals.

The organizational logic for prioritizing the elements of TBL differs between private and public hospitals. The economic element of TBL is crucial to survival for private hospitals. Compliance with the legal requirements and certifications of the environmental element is the major concern for public hospitals. Private and public hospitals would both pay considerably greater attention to the social element of TBL, if there were no judicial and economic restrictions.

This study differs from previous ones in terms of exploring the interfaces and relationships between TBL elements, which focus on the organizational logic to prioritize between the elements of TBL. There are both common denominators and differentiators between private and public hospitals, when it comes to the priority logic of TBL elements.

The priority logic of determining the most important TBL element it is mainly about satisfying organizational needs and societal demands. Determining the second most important TBL element is mostly about organizational preferences and what it wants to achieve. Determining the least important TBL element it is about the organizational mindset for and with respect to the future.

This study contributes to determining the appropriate organizational priority logic of the TBL elements, as well as common denominators and differentiators between private and public organizations. It also contributes to explaining the organizational reasoning as to why one TBL element may be prioritized over another, an issue which has not been addressed in existing theory and previous studies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate patients’ views toward the perceived service quality of public and private healthcare service providers. Determinants of healthcare service quality were compared by carrying out a GAP analysis to equate perceived and expected services and examined differences in the service quality.

The study sample comprises 310 inpatients of public and private healthcare service providers. Self-administered questionnaires were used along a five-point Likert scale and analyzed through the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. GAP analysis was used to observe the difference between expectations and perceived service quality.

A cross-sectional study revealed significant quality gaps between the expected and perceived services of public and private healthcare service providers; conversely patients’ expectations are not fully met in both types of hospitals. Private hospitals surpassed in terms of overall perceived service quality from their counterparts. Perceived services were found better in terms of physician medical services in public sector hospitals, while rooms and housekeeping services were found better in terms of private sector hospitals.

The result can be used by both public and private healthcare service providers to restructure their quality management practices which could only be possible through effective management commitment, regular patients’ feedback and translucent complaint procedures.

The study conceptualizes the expected and perceived hospital service quality dimensions as an eight-dimensional framework. A comparison between public and private sector hospitals is made to get a better understanding about the differences in the perceived healthcare services among two sectors. Consequences of the study will aid hospital managers and policy makers to get a fuller picture of healthcare services in order to contrive enhancement practices.

The purpose of this paper is to compare perceived service quality of public/government and private medical college hospitals.

This study adopts a descriptive, cross-sectional and research design. The research sample includes 340 in patients from six medical college hospitals located in the state of Odisha, India. Primary data are collected through a structured closed ended questionnaire containing 66 items on 1–7 point Likert scale. Statistical tools like factor analysis and ANOVA are performed with the help of SPSS-17 software to analyze the collected data.

This study identifies 13 dimensions of perceived hospital service quality. The comparative study indicates better performance of public/government hospitals across the technical dimensions of perceived service quality, whereas private hospitals report better performance across majority of the functional dimensions.

In the Indian healthcare system, public hospitals provide low-cost healthcare targeted toward low to middle socio-economic population whereas, large corporate private hospitals provide high-cost healthcare targeted toward high-income group. So the comparison between them produces an obvious result indicating better service quality in private hospitals. Present study minimizes this gap by comparing the service quality of public and private medical college hospitals. Medical colleges ensure access to health services for a larger group of people. Thus, similarity in the segment of population receiving medical services in public and private medical colleges is higher, making the comparison of perceived service quality fairer.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the logic and differentiators of organizational positioning and planning of sustainability initiatives between private and public organizations in the healthcare industry. Sustainability initiatives refer to organizations’ economic, social and environmental actions.

This study is based on an inductive approach judgmental sampling and in-depth interviews of executives at private and public hospitals in Spain have been used. Data were collected from the directors of communication at private hospitals, and from the executive in charge of corporate social responsibility in public hospitals. An empirical discourse analysis is used.

The positioning and planning of sustainability initiatives differs between private and public hospitals. The former consider sustainability as an option that is required mainly for social reasons, a bottom-up positioning and planning. It emerges merely spontaneously within the organization, while the sustainability initiatives in public hospitals are compulsory. They are imposed by the healthcare system within which the public hospital, operates and constitutes a top-down positioning and planning that is structured to accomplish set sustainability goals.

A limitation of this study is that it is undertaken exclusively in Spanish organizations from one industry. This study differs from previous ones in terms of exploring the positioning and planning of the sustainability initiatives, which focus on the organizational logic of such sustainability initiatives. There are both common denominators and differentiators between private and public hospitals.

The logic of determining the positioning and planning of the sustainability initiatives is mainly about satisfying organizational needs and societal demands. Nowadays, organizations tend to engage in sustainability initiatives, so it is essential to understand the logic of how organizations position and plan such efforts.

This study investigates the path that follows sustainability initiatives in public and private organizations. It reports mainly differentiators between private and public organizations. It also contributes to explaining the organizational reasoning as to why companies make decisions about sustainability initiatives, an issue which has not been addressed sufficiently in existing theory studies.

Lean Six Sigma in public and private healthcare organisations has received considerable attention over the last decade. Nevertheless, such process improvement methodologies are not generalizable, and their effective implementation relies on contextual variables. The purpose of this study is to explore the readiness of Italian hospitals for Lean Six Sigma and Quality Performance Improvement (LSS&QPI), with a focus on gender differences.

A survey comprising 441 healthcare professionals from public and private hospitals was conducted. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to determine the mean scores on the LSS&QPI dimensions based on hospital type, gender and their interaction.

The results showed that public healthcare professional are more aware of quality performance improvement initiatives than private healthcare professionals. Moreover, gender differences emerged according to the type of hospital, with higher awareness for men than women in public hospitals, whereas for private hospitals the opposite was true.

This study contributes to the Lean Six Sigma literature by focusing on the holistic assessment of LSS&QPI implementation.

This study informs healthcare managers about the revolution within healthcare organisations, especially public ones. Healthcare managers should spend time understanding Lean Six Sigma as a strategic orientation to promote the “lean hospital”, improving processes and fostering patient-centredness.

This is a preliminary study focussing on analysing inter-relationship between perceived importance of soft readiness factors such as gender dynamics as a missing jigsaw in the current literature. In addition, the research advances a holistic assessment of LSS&QPI, which sets it apart from the studies on single initiatives that have been documented to date.

Several studies have described health-seeking behaviour within the context of various diseases, the health status and age group. However, knowledge on patient health-seeking behaviour in the use of public and private hospitals and socio-demographic characteristics in developing countries is still scarce. This paper examines the influence of socio-demographic behavioural variables on health-seeking behaviour and the use of public and private health facilities in Ghana.

Quantitative research approach uses the modified SERVQUAL dimension as a data collection tool. Descriptive statistics with Pearson's chi-square test were conducted to determine the relationship between socio-demographic behavioural variables and health-seeking behaviour of patients using public and private hospitals.

The results showed that there is a significant relationship between the socio-demographic characteristics (sex, marital status, education, level of income) and the health-seeking behaviour of patients in regard to the utilisation of public and private health facilities (p < 0.000).

There is a significant relationship between patients' socio-demographic variables and their choice and utilisation of public and private healthcare services. This information is of value to policy makers so that they have an idea on the socio-demographic behavioural variables that influence patients' health-seeking behaviour.