Impacts of facility service procurement methods on perceived performance of hospital engineering services

Abstract

Purpose: The paper aims to describe a research study on the impacts of different facility service procurement methods on the perceived performance of hospital engineering services (HES). The procurement methods examined include in-house organization by hospital staff and through a service level agreement with a government agency, each with and without outsourcing from private sector services providers works for some trades of HES. Design/methodology/approach: Performance of HES was measured by end-users' perception obtained through a questionnaire survey. Statistical analysis of the perceived performance scores given in the 444 questionnaire returns was carried out to yield evidence in support of the hypotheses under test. Findings: The main hypothesis tested was that given the unified management and monitoring system used among the hospitals and the low tolerance for inadequate HES performance in healthcare settings, there should be minimal differences in the perceived performance of the HES despite the fact that facility services for the HES were procured through different methods, which was shown to be largely valid by the survey findings. The second hypothesis tested was that good or poor performance would be dominated by the nature of different trades of HES, which was also validated by the survey findings. Research limitations/implications: Due to the small number of users involved for some trades of HES, the uncertainties in some mean performance scores are relatively large. Practical implications: The findings allowed the hospital administration to focus on costs in measuring the cost effectiveness of HES provisions in its hospitals. Originality/value: A situation that involves co-existence of different procurement methods is hard to find, and thus the findings are valuable. The performance scores found in the study can be used for benchmarking performance of HES in future.