Family planning services: an implementation of the service quality gaps model

Intoduction: The current study aimed at defining the width of 4 gaps in the quality of family planning services. Methods and materials: The study sample consisted of 500 women seeking care from 51 health center under the supervision of the Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. Data were collected using a questionnaire. Participants' perception and expectation from health care centers were assessed using SERVQUAL scale, which has been previously translated to Persian. Results: Health care providers-Clients gap with respect to either expectations or perceptions were trivial (P-values>0.2). Generally, more than 90% of expectations of both clients and providers were perceived to be met by health centers. Satisfaction index indicated than 27% of participants were satisfied, 64.5% dissatisfied, and another 8.0% strongly dissatisfied. The dimension of responsiveness remained to be independently and statistically significantly associated with willingness of participants to seek family planning care from their health centers in the future. No matter how satisfied with other dimensions of the Outpatient Service Quality, clients who were strongly dissatisfied with the responsiveness of their health care centers were 12% less likely to be willing to seek care from their health centers in the future (P-value=0.026). Conclusion: We observed that more than 90% of the clients' expectations from family planning services are currently being met by health centers and that among different dimensions of the outpatient service quality. Willingness to come again to a health center was strongly and statistically significantly associated with the extent to which the health care providers were responsive (as perceived by clients). Family planning services provided by health centers were found by clients to be easy to use. Usability, however, did not provide any predictive ability above or beyond SERVQUAL scale.