In this article
This organization provides high-quality care and service.
Survey Domain: Organization
Survey Theme: Quality/Customer Focus
Understanding the Issue: The first step is to understand the issues behind the survey performance scores. Unless you are absolutely sure that you understand the issues related to a particular survey item, the best place to start is identifying them, and the section Understanding Issues can help you do so. The activities described in Understanding Issues can be used for any of the survey items. Make sure you know what is behind your low score before you begin acting.
Often, when work units provide unfavorable responses on this item, it is caused by the perception of the quality of care and service provided by other work units within the organization. If someone asks an employee, "Do you provide high-quality care" they will say, "Of course I do." If someone asks them if others within the organization provide the same high-quality care and service, they are more likely to share stories and incidents about the lack of high-quality care or service they have heard from other employees or patients. When assessing their own unit, employees often point to staffing levels, inefficient processes, lack of equipment, resources, or lack of information as barriers to providing quality care. Employees may also observe and pass judgment on what they see upstream coming into their work unit, and downstream, the way things are handled in other parts of the organization and believe that not enough is being done to improve quality care or service delivery in these areas.
Improvement ideas:
Define for your employees, through discussion and education, what high-quality care and service are intended to look like.
Ensure that specific quality goals are the focus of regular conversations with employees during huddles, rounding, staff meetings, and at the beginning of each new performance cycle or project. Quality goal(s) and outcomes should be seen as the highest priority and always on the radar.
Encourage employees to identify and report on breaches of policy or behaviors that would detract from quality and service goals and outcomes. Follow up promptly on any concerns, resolve them, and close the communication loop by reporting to those who raised the concern.
Work with the appropriate managers to investigate and resolve reported issues that occur outside of your own work unit. Be sure to approach your peers with a spirit of inquiry, rather than criticism, so that the opportunities to both strengthen cross-organization relations and resolve problems in a collegial way are accomplished.
Follow through on any quality solutions your work unit agrees upon. If the solution lies in another area, report on progress to the unit. Do not let solutions fail because they were not implemented. Periodic updates will help keep the team enthusiastic about the organization’s commitment to quality.
Look for previous solutions that were never implemented. In the past, issues regarding quality of care may have been acknowledged and solutions identified but not implemented. Often when employees give unfavorable responses to quality items, they are expressing their frustration with implementing high-quality care and service improvements.
(MI 42)