Hospital Food Service Thesis

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3.3 DEFINING THE PROBLEM In spite of the fact that the Government has initiated a number of quality initiative programmes in the public sector for officers working directly with members of the public, yet there is still a perception among members of the public who perceive that the public sector organizations offer a poor level of service quality to customers and that adequate efforts are not being made by Government to improve the level of service quality. However, the health care sector has a unique position among other services as it is a rare service that people need but do not necessarily want (Berry and Bendapudi, 2007). The increase in the population coupled with demand for better health care in recent times is putting intense pressure …show more content…

Proper foodservice and nutritional care in hospitals has beneficial effects on the recovery of patients and on their quality of life (Kondrup 2004). Hospital food services are an important component in the healthcare management of patients. The provision of patient meals should be regarded as a component of hospital treatment as the nutrients provided can promote recovery, especially if patients have no other options for getting food while hospitalised. Measuring patient satisfaction toward hospital food services is one tool used in research to improve catering services (Capra et al., 2005). While many studies were conducted in an attempt to measure service quality and patient satisfaction of hospital food services all over the world throughout the years, there are no statistics available and, as far as we are aware, no study has been conducted in this unit of the Ministry of Health and Quality of Life of the Republic of Mauritius. This study will therefore focus on the influence of six independent variables namely patients’ expectations, management perception, service specifications, perception of service delivery, external communications and assessment of employees perception on the quality of the catering service provided by a …show more content…

For the purpose of this study, the following hypotheses were derived: 3.5.1 Hypothesis 1 Ho: There is no significant linear relationship between patients’ expectations and service quality H1: There is a significant linear relationship between patients’ expectations and service quality 3.5.2 Hypothesis 2 Ho: There is no significant linear relationship between Jeetoo Hospital’s Management Perception and service quality H1: There is a significant linear relationship between Jeetoo Hospital’s Management Perception and service quality 3.5.3 Hypothesis 3 Ho: There is no significant linear relationship between the service specifications of the food service and service quality H1: There is a significant linear relationship between service specifications of the food service and service quality 3.5.4 Hypothesis 4 Ho: There is no significant linear relationship between the perception of service delivery and service quality H1: There is a significant linear relationship between perception of service delivery and service quality 3.5.5 Hypothesis 5 Ho: There is no significant linear relationship between the external communications and service quality H1: There is a significant linear relationship between external communications and service

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