Improving Service Quality Within University Hospitals

The healthcare sector is one where all key players should strive to ensure that they do not commit any errors in their operations; because it mostly involves the decision of life and death to a human being. Hospitals, therefore, have to ensure that they work towards ensuring that their patients feel satisfied with the service that they receive upon visiting the hospital. Hospitals remain assured to improve their satisfaction scores by creating a conducive working environment that allows their employees to undergo career growth. They also align their behavior and set their minds towards the achieving the hospital’s goals and objectives. Hospital management needs to communicate with their staff and put into place measures that give priority to meeting of all the patients’ needs; so that they can successfully attain and maintain a respectable satisfaction

Customer service levels should be the highest priority of any health-care organization. Trying to balance between the increasing demand and supply of health care arenas,

This paper will describe current quality outcome measures and the significance for improving medical care. Organizational accountability and transparency has improved with the emergence of Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) programs and Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPs). This article will review the role of the nurse manager in creating a culture for quality care as well as the nurse for meeting organizational and patient expectations. Organizations like The Joint Commission (JC), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and The American Nurses Association (ANA) have been critical in establishing standards for quality. This paper will also report on the most recent hospital statistics and steps taken to improve HCAHP scores and reduce readmission rates at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville (UTMCK). Statistics at UTMCK will also be compared to the Tennessee and National averages found on the Medicare website Hospital Compare. The aim of this paper is to explore if healthcare system initiatives are improving quality and enhancing patient outcomes.

Another secondary issue is the weakened employee expectations and employee performance, which adversely affects good patient care as well. The person in charge of patient registration is unprofessional to staff and patients. The facility is not clean because maintenance is slow in performing assigned duties. The parking is unsafe and unattended. The staff lacks the motivation to perform well.

Health care organizations should work on putting more emphasis on patient experience and satisfaction, such as giving evaluations when giving care. When it comes to patient satisfication the healthcare system should put their sole focus on making sure patient were well taken care of during their visit. Whether if the patient was satisfied or not with their experience. Patient experience/satisfaction in a hospital should always be a number one priority and getting the person back at 100%. Hospitals are always looking for ways to improve several different things such as technology, health in populations, reducing cost, maintaince, etc. But they fail to focus on the quality care, Avoidable harm is a worthy goal that all health care system should benefit

Healthcare is the single largest business around the world and plays a vital role in society today. The desire to enhance quality of care in healthcare delivery has increased tremendously.

According to Fred Lee (2004) hospitals use clinical results and process improvement as a gauge of quality as this data can be readily measured and objective. Conversely, patients judge the quality of care by individual perception. Therein a gap of what the patient’s perception of quality care and how the healthcare providers perceive quality of care is created. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the Gaps Model of Service Quality while comparing the findings of the work done by Fred Lee in the book, If Disney Ran Your Hospital: 91/2 Things You would Do Differently.

Quality Improvement can be defined as the combined effort of health care professionals including, doctors, nurses, healthcare managers who ensure better patients outcome such as quality care, safety, better system performance and better professional development. Healthcare system always goes through changes, whether its implementation of new systems or diagnosis of new disease. Therefore, health organizations are always in need of some improvement and advancement. In order to achieve improvement, systems have to go through a series of change; however, not all changes can be called an improvement. To ensure the improvement in these systems, some powerful strategies are planned, designed and implemented. These formal strategies analyze the systemic efforts and measure performance in order to improve the entire system and is called quality improvement or QI program.

In years past, the hospital experience has been a big issue when it comes to the quality of healthcare. Most hospitals that don’t meet national standards included lengthy stays, several misjudgments and holes in prevention control. In general they have lacked patient respect, according to medical historians and health care professionals. However, these issues have improved substantially over the years. Because of cultural shifts, policy adjustments, healthcare prices, and technological advances, hospitals have moved toward a more patient based approach that emphasizes the importance of prioritizing prevention in all cases. Patient satisfaction is now a priority in healthcare nationally.

The 1st Lesson: Hospital values must be in line with what patients want. The key driver for patient satisfaction is the courtesy, not efficiency of the hospital. Patients judge the service received by courtesy, but employees are managed according to efficiency and safety. Although provide safe care is paramount, the hospitals do not learn any credit for providing safe clinical practice and environmental safety.

Healthcare has become a consumer driven industry with patient satisfaction equating to good customer service. Effective communication has been shown to be a key factor in both patient outcomes and satisfaction. Additionally, patient satisfaction has become a tool used by insurers to evaluate medical facilities and may impact reimbursement to hospitals for patient care. In this paper, I will discuss the issue of ineffective communication in the waiting area of the surgical services department at Mount Carmel East Hospital. The impact of ineffective communication effects patients and members of the perioperative team. Results of patient surveys

The call centre of the Eastern Medical Faculty Foundation, hereafter referred to as EMFF, provides a competitive advantage to the Internal Medicine Department of the Chicago School of Medicine through the delivery of efficient and high quality service to patients. Treating patients generates revenue the Internal Medicine Department and contributes to investments in research in the highly competitive healthcare sector. Unfortunately, declining customer satisfaction, as evidenced in a growing number of customer complaints, suggests the quality of service is deteriorating and threatens the very competitive advantage of the EMFF.

Modern society has developed formal institutions for patient care. The hospital a major institution offers considerable advantages to both patient and society. Number of health problems requires intensive medical treatment and personal care which normally can’t be available in patients home or in the clinic of a doctor. This is possible only where a large number or professionally and technically skilled people apply their knowledge & skill with the world class expertise advanced sophisticated equipment and appliances. The excellence of hospital services depend on how well the human and material resources are utilized to promote patient care.

Service Quality as described by (William G. Zikmund, 1993) “is the degree to which the performance of service provider’s matches customer expectations. It can also be defined as those essential characteristics of a service that measures its excellence”.

Customer service is developed by the patient’s satisfaction and the effect it has on the health care system. Customer service is the face of every business and specially the health care system which it provides leaders with an idea of how the business should look or act. The healthcare systems benefit from the opportunities made by patients. Patients should be the instrument to provide guidance while the physician advocates for the patient’s health. Customer service is a support system between the patient and the physician and without that support system then there is not guidance for a better lifestyle for patients. This is a competitive market that have a few limitations and those limitations start with customer service in healthcare and how to provide the best care for patients. These challenges that the healthcare system face will overcome those obstacles and bring out their best principles to make the system better. Patient centered care relates to customer service and should be recognized as the central focus. High- quality healthcare systems provide satisfaction to patients to show that their experience will be well worth it because their physicians care about their patient’s health.