Importance-performance analysis in the tertiary healthcare centres: evidence from India

Purpose In the process of providing quality healthcare services, identifying the important healthcare attributes and their operational performance is crucial in the healthcare industry. Highlighting this, the authors have aimed to find the importance of certain healthcare attributes and their respective performance from the customers’ perspective in the Indian private tertiary healthcare facilities by conducting an importance-performance analysis (IPA). Design/methodology/approach For this study, the authors have derived 10 healthcare attributes from the literature and responses regarding their importance and performance were taken from 350 inpatients from 6 hospitals. Findings The analysis resulted in identification of the most and least important, high and low performing healthcare attributes as perceived by the patients. In terms of attribute importance, the doctors’ competencies and provision of safe and effective patient care have been ranked most important, whereas the doctors’ competencies and accessibility have been rated high in terms of performance. In addition, the importance ranks and performance scores helped in the development of a two-dimensional IPA grid. Practical implications The IPA grid helped in identifying the areas for improvement, hence determining the need for implementation of significant strategies in the process of cost-effective high-quality healthcare service provision. Originality/value There is a paucity of IPA studies with a focus on the Indian healthcare system in identifying and demonstrating the healthcare components that need to be addressed for improvement. Emphasizing the gap, this is one of the pioneering studies that captured various healthcare attributes’ importance and their respective performance from the lens of hospital inpatients, which helped in the development of an IPA grid by clearly outlining the areas that need attention, especially in the post-pandemic scenario.