Improving medical service quality based on the Critical Incident Technique

Key factors of service quality impacting patient satisfaction can be identified through investigating the critical incidents in the medical process. In this study, we collect the critical incidents positive or negative of 446 patients, and classify them into three kinds including interaction quality, tangible environment quality and outcome quality by using the Critical Incident Technique based on Cronin's service quality concept model. The result indicates: the factor leading patient most satisfactory or dissatisfactory are interactive quality, including medical staffs' service attitude, medical staffs' behavior, professional competence and other patients' behavior; then, it is the outcome quality, including waiting time, treatment effect, and medical costs. On this basis, we put forward medical service quality improvement strategy based on internal marketing, operations management, process management and so on.