Evaluation of the quality of safe dental services based on the perception of patients with the IPA approach: a powerful diagnostic tool for managers.

Abstract

Background: In today's competitive world, especially in critical situations, dental clinic managers seek to retain customers and allocate more market share. The importance-performance analysis (IPA) technique is a powerful diagnostic tool that helps managers identify fundamental deficiencies, establish priorities and provide insights into which service improvement areas managers should focus on. This study aimed to improve the quality of life of patients at the Alborz Dental Clinic based on their perception of safe services during the coronavirus pandemic using IPA.

Materials and methods: In this analytical cross-sectional study, 324 patients referred to at Alborz Dental Clinic from April 2021 to February 2022 were enrolled in the study through simple random sampling. The data collection tool used was a researcher-designed questionnaire based on the indicators of the quality improvement model and the guidelines of the Ministry of Health, Medical Education and Health of Iran regarding the provision of dental services in the context of COVID-19, the validity and reliability of which were measured. The gap analysis results and determination of areas of improvement were obtained using IPA. The data analysis was performed using SPSS26 and Excel software.

Results: The results of the paired ttest showed that the difference between importance and performance for all the research variables was significant (significance level less than 5%).The importance of the components exceeded their performance. The deepest gap among the five components of the model was related to accountability. IPA revealed that two variables, reliability and responsiveness, are placed in quadrant A, and three variables, tangibility, assurance, and empathy, are placed in quadrant B.

Conclusion: To improve the quality of safe services, dental clinic managers need to pay attention to the three dimensions of "tangibility", "assurance" and "empathy" and plan and make decisions about the two dimensions of "reliability" and "responsiveness".