Rensberry.com
This book helped me adjust my thoughts on the value of patient satisfaction scores.
As a doctor, it is difficult at times to come to terms with the balance of doing the right thing for the patient and at the same time trying to maintain high levels of patient satisfaction. Occasionally, what patients state that they want is not best for them medically - such as the desire for antibiotics for viral infections.
After reading this book, I plan on influencing the culture around me to concentrate more on courtesy, ownership, creating a climate of dissatisfaction, and working to create a cooperative environment not a competitive one with rewards to motivate.
Fred Lee is right when he states that patients "hold in their minds a mental picture of how a person should be treated, and that picture becomes the standard by which their experience is judged." p10
He goes on:
When hospitals spend most of their efforts in clinical results and proess improvement, their data are defined by outcomes and therefore can be measured objectively. The patient, however, judges quality by his or her perceptions, something that is subjective and cannot be verified in the same way as outcomes. The patient is judging the overall experience of being in a hospital. p12
He draws this important distinction:
...outcomes are delivered by teams, whereas impressions are delivered by individuals. p13
To improve outcomes - a leader must focus on what people do.
To improve perceptions - focus must be on what a person says or does not say, creating the impression. p14
The ability to work well as a team is not synonymous with the impression of working well as a team ... and vice versa. p24
If Disney ran your hospital, you would make courtesy more important than efficiency. p30
Accountabilities drive structure, and structure drives culture. p41
Dissatisfaction and loyalty are determined from memorable events. Unexpected events make a stay memorable. p51 and p53
The most important job of a manager is getting the right people in the right places doing the right things for theright reason. p135
If necessity is the mother of invention, dissatisfaction must be the father of improvement. ... Complacency is the adversary of excellence. p157