Onshore Outsourcing and Quality of Service in Federal Healthcare Institutions in South-East Nigeria

Abstract

The purpose of this exploratory research was to investigate the effect of outsourcing security, cleaning, and laundry services on the quality of the outsourced services and, by implication, the quality of healthcare services delivered by federal healthcare institutions in South-East Nigeria. A self-designed survey instrument was distributed to a sample of 303 permanent staff of the institutions (the internal customers of the service providers), and 162 usable copies of the questionnaire were retrieved, representing 54 per cent response rate. From the data analysis 66.9 per cent of the respondents perceived improvement in the quality of security services; 69.1 per cent of the respondents perceived improvements in the quality of cleaning services; and 65.8 per cent of the respondents perceived improvements in the quality of laundry services since the services were outsourced in the institutions. These responses show that outsourcing led to improvements in the quality of all the outsourced services. And being inputs in the healthcare delivery process, improvements in the quality of these services suggest improvements in the quality of healthcare services offered by these institutions. The result of this study justifies the decision to outsource the services, and encourages public organisations to outsource non-core activities as a strategy towards improving the quality of their service delivery.