By - Akshata P. Nadkarni, Student of PGDM-Healthcare Management at Goa Institute of Management
In today’s world, where the technology is being updated every single day, the need to inculcate the same in hospitals to improve the quality of care is also increasing. The corporate hospitals now aim at providing better services than what their competitors provide. Indian population is slowly moving from prevalence of communicable diseases to non-communicable or rather one can put it as lifestyle diseases. These patient bases mostly belong to upper and middle socio economic background and now as people are much aware and educated, they choose which hospital to go to. Therefore, understanding the patient and listening to their need that can be put into action is of utmost importance for hospitals to gain customer satisfaction.
Check - Sample Patient Satisfaction Feedback Form
Check - Sample Patient Satisfaction Feedback Form
What is VoC? And is it really required?
Voice of Customer (VoC) is term used to study in depth about customers’ needs and expectations. It is primarily used in Business and Information technology as a part of marketing strategy while launching a new product.
VoC can play a crucial role determining where the hospital is lacking, as patients are after all customers of the hospital. Survey shows that, among 20 people who give feedback 15 people will rate the hospital satisfactory but will not return and rest five will give genuine complaints about the hospital. Hence, by implementing VoC, the hospital can gather accurate information about patients experience in the hospital. VoC is mode of measurement for the hospital to see their capability in satisfying need and expectations of the patient.
Many hospitals in United States who uses VoC services through some or the other tool has good patient flow, smooth functioning, increased communication with patients and high efficiency.
There are different Six Sigma tools that collects Voice of Customer data. Some of the examples are Surveys, Customer complaints, data based on ”moment of truth” encounters (moment-of-truth situation is defined as the time when customer interacts with the administration and forms his impression on the quality of services provides by the organization) and Quality Function Development.
Need for putting VoC in action:
The tertiary and quaternary care providers in India gives high end services but may lack in quality of care and sometime are ignorant of many issues faced by patients. Now that hospitals are integrating IT in healthcare such as Electronic Medical Records and Telemedicine, this can be the next step by incorporating VoC and putting it into action.
It is observed that 18% out of total hospitals that are closed are due to patient dissatisfaction. Many hospitals go for surveys, but surveys, even with high accuracy can be biased based on organizations perception towards the value of patient is, rather than what patient actually values. Whereas tools such as Quality Function Development will give the organization details of patient’s needs, importance of those needs to the hospital, technical description for each of the listed needs by patient and finally the rating for the strength of relationship between the needs and level of importance for the hospital.
For Voice of customer process to correctly identify patient needs, the management should put into action a staffed six sigma process team which will get solicit information from patient or relatives, assemble the collected data, analyse it and interpret the results, list out actionable goals and finally execute the project to realize the goals.
Implementation of such tool can face lot of challenges such as human resources accountable for Voice of Customer process, cost of implementation and time taken to incorporate it but in the long run it can provide lot of useful data to the hospital for its improvement and continuous upgradation.
REFRENCES:
Voice of Customer (patient) for six sigma processes in Healthcare https://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/lean-six-sigma-business-transformation/columns/voice-of-the-customer-patient-for-six-sigma-proces
The real value in voice of customer : customer experience http://www.cmo.com/opinion/articles/2016/3/29/the-real-value-in-voice-of-the-customer-the-customer-experience.html#gs.gqddros
