Customer Satisfaction
As healthcare becomes more competitive it is important for department heads to identify all their customers in order to effectively market the department’s services. Respiratory Care performs both inpatient and outpatient services which encompasses a variety of customers. Once these customers have been established it is important to have a successful plan in place to assess and mange the satisfaction of all the department customers to ensure continuing growth.
Customer
Customers can vary greatly depending on the service being provided. For inpatient procedures the customer can include the patient that is receiving a therapy, family members that are concerned or taking care of their loved one, physicians that are prescribing care or consulting on the patient, nurses, case workers, or any other ancillary service that assist in the patient’s care. The list is very similar for patients receiving outpatient services as well. Customers are truly anyone that we come in contact with and provide a service. There are times as a respiratory department we will also seek out our customers in the community, for example, asthma education in the public school system. Customer in this setting would be the student, parents, teachers, aides, and the school nurse. There is also the internal customers that the respiratory departments work with everyday to include other ancillary department and our own coworkers. There is a long list of customers that respiratory therapists attend to on a daily basis and it is necessary to remember the list does not end with the one patient.
Assessing Satisfaction
Once a customer is identified it is important to assess the satisfaction of the various customer groups. Surveys are a great way to get feedback and can be done easily through mail, email or phone surveys. It is helpful to keep surveys simple and possible use a scale