Integrated quality healthcare practice in hospitals - a structural equation modelling approach

In today's highly competitive environment, healthcare establishments HCEs like hospitals and health centres are focusing on service quality, as a measure to face the competition. There is a strong doubt that, whether the present quality systems practice in hospitals serve the stakeholders' expectations effectively. The authors felt that the proposed model namely integrated quality healthcare system (IQHS) with ten important critical factors could meet out this gap. The objective of this paper is to discuss the IQHS practice in hospitals in Tamil Nadu, India through the perception of stakeholders. Further the model has been validated through structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. The authors conclude that the contextual relationships of the ten critical factors of IQHS were found to be the significant drivers of quality performance to attain sustainability.