Assessing the Quality of Health Services Provided to Women Under the Health Care Plan: Khorasan Razavi Province

Background: Women’s health is considered as one of the indicators of efficiency and success of the health system of countries, and promoting the health of this group requires the provision of quality services. Accordingly, the present study aimed to investigate the quality of health services provided to women after the implementation of the health care plan in 2018. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 400 women visiting comprehensive health care centers affiliated with Mashhad University of Medical Sciences were selected as the participants using multi-stage cluster sampling. The data in this study were collected using the SERVQUAL questionnaire and analyzed with SPSS 20. Results: The mean scores of the clients’ expectations and perceptions were 4.97±0.87 and 3.41±0.42 and the mean score of the service quality gap was 1.55±0.44. The highest mean quality gap score was related to reliability (1.73±0.53) and the lowest mean quality gap score was related to the tangible and physical dimension (1.48±0.54) followed by the service assurance dimension (1.48±0.53). Conclusion: This study showed that despite the implementation of the Health Transformation Plan, the quality of services in the studied centers was still lower than the service recipients’ expectations. Thus, given the importance of providing health services during the COVID-19 pandemic for its prevention, health care center managers need to be aware of clients’ expectations, identify problems leading to their dissatisfaction, and use quality management strategies to improve the quality of services and promote women’s health.