Telehealth services evaluation: a combination of SERVQUAL model and importance-performance analysis

Telehealth services provide a means of monitoring a patient's vital signs through the use of equipment or mobile devices and have the potential to extend clinical outreach to more patients regardless of geographical locations. However, patient acceptance is essentially important for the success of telehealth implementations. Thus, it is of interest to evaluate patients' attitudes and perceptions toward the use of telehealth services. This study combines service quality model and importance-performance analysis to evaluate telehealth services provided by a case hospital. The results show that six items belong to major weaknesses, which should be addressed immediately in order to reduce patients' complaints. In contrast to major weaknesses, there are seven items classified as major strengths, which should be maintained to provide telehealth service excellence in order to establish better and longer relationships with patients in the long-term perspectives.