Posted by Kristin Baird
The term quality assurance or QA has been around since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Simply put – it is a process or system for monitoring products or services to ensure that they meet the standard.
Patient Satisfaction
Healthcare organizations are always striving to improve quality, but the term quality often applies only to clinical outcomes. What about patient experience? If you have set standards for customer service, what are you doing to monitor the consistency? Of course you are measuring patient satisfaction, but that is a lagging indicator with little or no “story” value to personalize the events and attribute the service to specific individuals. I find that it’s the stories that move people into action.
Medical Mystery Shopping
Mystery shopping is a great way to validate whether or not your team members are delivering on the standards during every encounter with every customer, every day. We recently provided an organization with a mystery shopping report that included both the numeric scores as well as the comments and anecdotal descriptions. I literally watched people sit up and tune in closer when we shared the stories.
QA isn’t just for clinical outcomes. Take a closer look to see how your staff is upholding the standards.
- Quality Assurance for Patient Experience
- It Depends – 2 Words that Kill Your Brand
- Your Patient Experience is More than the Numbers
- “It depends,” and Other Brand Killers
- Let’s Get Real About Incentives
