Buy an essay on Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Nowadays, customer satisfaction is an important issue for any health care organization in the United States. It is known that customers in this case are the patients who need effective health care services. According to the numerous studies, patient satisfaction is used as “a quality improvement tool for health care providers”.(Cheng et al, 2003, para.1)
Measurement of customer satisfaction includes such dimensions as medical care, interpersonal communication, admission and discharge services and so on. Besides, special attention is paid to responsiveness of the health care staff, food services, clinical and comforting skills. Moreover, patients are interested in effective technical skills of health care providers which will guarantee positive results in the process of treatment. (Cheng et al, 2003, para.3)
My goal in this paper is to select one of the hospitals and to review the data concerning patient satisfaction measurement. I’d like to represent Randolph Hospital. Patient Satisfaction scores which can be found on the official site of Randolph Hospital give a clear picture of this criteria. According to the surveys which were carried out after discharge of the patients who received medical care in such areas of the hospital as Inpatient and Outpatient services areas, and Surgical and Emergency services areas, Surgical services were on the highest level of the scale while Emergency Department services were on the lowest level of the scale in January-March, 2009.
However, in April-May, 2009, the results of the survey were the following: Outpatient Services were on the highest level of the scale while Surgical Services and Emergency Department Services were on the lowest level of the scale.(Randolph Hospital)
The above mentioned results show that the patients were not satisfied with some aspects during their treatment process in the hospital. That is why it is necessary to recommend the following satisfaction measuring criteria for improvement:
• to improve technical skills which include hospital equipment and the physician’s competence.
• to improve relationships between health care providers and patients or interpersonal skills which include not only the physician’s attitude but also his caring manner and his explanation of illness.
• to improve food services.
One more important thing concerning the improvement of customer satisfaction is to find appropriate quality improvement strategies which will help to increase the level of patients satisfaction. They are the following ones:
• Health Provider education strategy which includes different conferences and educational visits with distribution of educational materials for the staff of the hospital;
• Organizational Change strategy which is based on certain changes in the hospital management, change from paper records to computer-based records, computer based decision support for the medical staff;
• Patient Education strategy which is based on providing patients with necessary materials, organization of classes and parent and family education. (Hughes, 2007, p.4)
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, it is necessary to say that patient satisfaction and reputation of the hospital are very important for health providers who should find appropriate quality improvement strategies in order to put their health services on the highest level.

References
Cheng, S., Yang, M., Chiang, T. (2003) Patient Satisfaction with and Recommendation of a Hospital: Effects of Interpersonal and Technical Aspects of Hospital Care. International Journal for Quality in Health Care. Vol.15(4).
Hughes, R. (2007) Tools and Strategies for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety. Patient Safety and Quality. Vol.3 Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.