Healthcare Customer Service

Healthcare Customer Service
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Institutional Affiliation
Date

Healthcare Customer Service
The management demonstrated its focus on the customer by looking for ways in which its processes were not pleasant to the consumer. Before the change, the facility principles treated the surgical process as the consumer. The process, therefore, had to be followed to the latter without considering the dynamic needs of every patient who came to the facility (Kelly, 2007). The first step towards demonstrating the concern for the patient was to listen to the complaints of the people. The facility employed an elaborate mechanism through which it would be possible to get consumer feedback on satisfaction levels. Though these mechanisms, it was understood that the satisfaction levels were very low. This resulted in a determined effort to change the patient experiences. The administrator who was chosen to lead the task force that would ensure change for the patient had an experience as a nurse. This would ensure that she understood the needs of the patient as well as the process. As a consequence of her experience and understanding, she also chose a task force that had many nurses. This team began its mandate with changing the notion of the process as the primary concern to the patient of the primary concern (Hayes, 2008). The company fully expresses its focus on the patient through the rigorous process of ensuring that all the patient’s complaints are listed, and there is an attempt to resolve them.

In this case study, the only customer is the patient. The facility is, and a surgical center and therefore the customer is the individual who will undergo surgery. There are numerous other stakeholders such as the physicals, the nurses, the surgeons, the insurers, the administrators and families of the patient. However, as the administrator observes, the patient is the focal point between all the other stakeholders (Kelly, 2007). He or she is the only one who has a relationship with all the other stakeholders. In fact, all the stakeholders exist because of the patient, and therefore his concerns should be the interest of the other stakeholders (Hayes, 2008).
The customer expectation for this case study was efficiency and concern. The most prominent problem for the facility was the time that was wasted in between procedures. There were extremely long queues outside surgery, preoperational rooms, and pharmacies and so on. There was also the administration of excessive anesthetics. This elongated the recovery time for patients and therefore increased the time that they spent in the facility. For this reason, an outpatient process that could have taken four hours easily took twice the time (Kelly, 2007). The other problem was the dehumanization of the patients. They complained about having to stay the entire time without underwear’s and sitting on the wheelchairs all through. The management became aware of this expectation as they tried to identify the reason for low customer satisfaction recorded by the patient. As a response, they instituted a team lead by the internal quality consultant that would give suggestions on how to improve the processes for the needs of the patient. As a result, numerous changes were instituted. These include the decision to let patient who was well enough to walk to surgery, letting the patients retain their underwear’s and even clothes if the operation did not require the removal. They also allowed patients to purchase the drugs in pharmacies outside the hospital and encouraged physicians to administer lesser anesthetics to speed up recovery. The success of these procedures can be determined by the increasing positive feedback from patients (Hayes, 2008) who also went into surgery feeling better and left feeling better.

References
Hayes, B. (2008). Measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty. Milwaukee, WI: ASQ Quality Press.
Kelly, D. (2007). Applying quality management in healthcare. Chicago, Ill.: Health Administration Press.