The impact of risk management on service quality in public hospitals

Abstract

Purpose – The main aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between risk management practices and service quality in outpatient departments of Gauteng public hospitals. The study also evaluates the quality of the service provided at these outpatient departments. Methodology – The research design firstly included the review of literature on risk management and service quality. The study applied a quantitative research methodology where structured self-administered questionnaires were used as the data collection tools which were distributed to hospital staff to assess the relationship between risk management practices, and different set of questionnaires distributed to patients visiting the outpatient department. Judgement and convenience sampling was used to select the hospital staff and the patients, whereas stratified sampling was used to select the hospitals that were visited. Findings - The study reveals that outpatient departments of Gauteng public hospitals seem to be performing well with high patient perception scores. The positive aspects of service quality include neat and knowledgeable staff and informative patient files. The results show that only some of the risk management practises had a significant effect on service quality, such as management support and commitment, training and education and continuous improvement.