Clients who feel their needs are being met, stay with healthcare services.
It is also true that a client who feels good about the services they are receiving, will have better outcomes. It matters a great deal that we know if our customers are satisfied.
An operational Satisfaction Survey should be administered periodically and reviewed carefully to determine whether service or delivery modification may need to be made. As an example, one CEO noticed to his horror that size of patient pillows was smaller than his children were used to sleeping on. This same CEO immediately changed the pillows out. As he explained, the cost was insignificant compared to the satisfaction of he patients
When all components of the evaluation process are conducted by an organization, whether accomplished internally or with the assistance of a consultant, important information is gained that can be shared with the organizations’ stakeholders.
We now know that report cards are now being used by third party payers to determine which providers serve their members better. In this case, it is far better to have provider’s initiate their own outcome evaluations for 3rd party payers, rather than wait for outside payors to take on these responsibilities.
Wikipedia has it right, “Evaluation is the systematic, rigorous application of scientific methods to assess the design, implementation, or outcomes of a program”. While satisfied customers is usually a resource-intense process, the expenditures involved frequently requires expertise, labor, time and money.
Customer satisfaction is commonly the core of an internal continuous quality improvement (CQI) process within the operation and consists of identifying key quality indicators for which data will be collected and systematically monitored. Variables, or measures should include those aimed at Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Access.
In selecting evaluation indicators, every CEO should ask themselves, “what do we believe are the most important variables in the provision of quality and customer satisfaction”?
