Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.

Background and purpose: Hospital is the largest and most important executive unit of healthcare system therefore, full consideration of how to assess its quality is of particular importance. A question is always raised as how to evaluate the quality of the services. The current study seeks to provide a fuzzy model for assessing the service quality in this healthcare sector. Material and method: The present cross-sectional study was conducted in two hospitals in Zahedan 2012.Via reviewing the related literature, the dimensions and components of service quality assessment were identified. The SERVQUAL questionnaire for hierarchical analyses was designed and the fuzzy AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) model was presented. SPSS v 10.0 and Fuzzy TOPSIS Solver 2013 software were used to analyze data. Results: The findings indicated that the most important dimension for estimating the quality of healthcare services was empathy. Responsiveness, assurance, and tangible assets were the last important factors. The hospitals were compared using fuzzy AHP. According to the calculations, the ranking of the hospitals based on their performance was as follows: Imam Ali hospital with 31% compared to Social Security hospital with 29% had a better performance in service quality. Conclusion: The results revealed that hospitals needed to focus more on empathy, expertise and reliability than providing high quality and satisfactory services. By considering their weaknesses, each of these hospitals can enhance service quality and consequently, provide a better service for patients