Applying Grey Relational Method to Analyze the QFD Process of Medical Service Quality

In the context of economic level sustaining its ascent curve, living and education are upgrading at every moment. Medical facilities have increased dramatically and competitions among hospitals become more and more intensive. Therefore, people require better medical services. In order to promote the competitiveness, hospital´s services must be aimed to patients´ needs. Also, hospitals should adjust the type of medical treatment to satisfy patients. However, there are many aspects of medical service qualities. Hospitals have to concentrate on important factors of Medical Service Quality and improve the customer satisfaction. The study surveyed with questionnaire 185 patients who had been consulted the Medical Centers in central Taiwan. Data of Quality Function Deployment were collected. The study then used the GRA (Grey Relational Analysis) method to analyze the QFD data in order to rank the Medical Service Quality Factors. The results indicate that the five most important factors of Medical Service Quality are: nurse´s service, hospital construction, hospital personnel´s professionalism, hospital´s management system, staff service quality. In addition, the study also compared with conventional methods, quality attribute ranking. The rankings of factors are very alike. The findings show that GRA method is not only suitable for the analysis of QFD data, but also able to complement the limitation of conventional method. Keywords: Grey Relational Method, QFD, Medical Service Quality, Quality attribute ranking.