Strategic direction of developing service guidelines for dental patients with disability / 대한구강보건학회지

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed at assessing the quality of dental services, as perceived by the disabled, and analyzing the factors identified to be of both high importance and low performance, as identified by IPA. METHODS: The data were collected from June 8 to November 2, 2016, after approval by the institutional review board. Questionnaires were distributed to 1466 disabled dental service consumers, of which 349 cases were included. The data were analyzed by frequency analysis, multi-regression analysis for implicit importance, and IPA matrix for marketing strategy. RESULTS: The performance results revealed that cost level, reduction of the fee, and waiting time for treatments were the sources of greatest dissatisfaction. The IPA matrix results categorized the next appointment, explanation of the fee, waiting time for treatment, professionalism of the staff, and convenient facilities as high-importance, low-performance factors. Meanwhile, the results of the IPA matrix for consumer segmentation, according to recently used dental institutions were different. The dental clinic users evaluated professionalism of the staff, convenience of the facility, explanation of the fee, and cost level as high-importance, low-performance attributes. The dental hospital users indicated that waiting time for treatment and next appointment were high-importance, low-performance attributes. Finally, the public health center users indicated that convenience of booking, waiting time for treatment, convenience of facilities, reduction of the fee, and next appointment as high-importance, low-performance attributes. CONCLUSIONS: To improve the quality of dental service, we need to understand the needs of the dental patients with disability. All attributes that were categorized as high-importance, low-performance must be improved first and should accordingly be used as strategic factors to increase satisfaction with oral medical institutions.