Continuous Quality Improvement on Businesses’ Success and Customer Satisfaction
Among the factors that contribute to a business’s success, customer satisfaction is one of the most important ones. Like many other establishments, hospitals depend on providing quality services to satisfy the customers whose loyalty is vital for the institution’s flawless running. According to O’Donnell and Gupta (2020), Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) involves progressively improving processes, safety, and patient care. Hospitals use CQI to reduce variabilities and running costs to meet regulations and enhance quality customer service (Journal of Hospital Medicine, 2010). Therefore, it is critical to have a CQI program that promotes customer satisfaction by ensuring the provision of services meets customers’ expectations.
The Middle County Hospital (MCH) is keen on CQI in several areas around the hospital, but the management staff currently focuses on the imaging and foodservice sectors. The problem with the current imaging sector involves re-dos due to substandard images. Consequently, there are escalations in customer dissatisfaction and additional costs to both the patients and the hospital. Additionally, there may be delays in necessary patient treatment. On the other hand, the reduction in customer satisfaction in the food sector frequently arises from patients on bland diets. These patients find it hard to rate highly the food they consume because it differs significantly from the food they’d rather have. Therefore, to satisfy the hospital board and show improvements in the CQI program, it is critical to develop strategies that reduce or eliminate quality service delivery problems before presenting the final report.
To fully understand the problems at hand, it is essential to employ the appropriate data representation techniques. According to Gomes (n.d.), data visualizations should be useful, appealing, and straightforward, especially when working with large data sets. A table in an excel document could summarize the imaging sector’s progress that demonstrates the frequency of re-dos in a day, week, and month. Additionally, the table can compute the means and percentages of the re-dos and their differences to show if there have been improvements. Conversely, concerning foodservice, constructing a simple table including the day, menu of that day, and respective customer feedback will be appropriate for analyzing the problem. Bar charts can then visually represent these datasets separately and track significant changes over time (Gomes, n.d.). This information will help in critically explaining the progress of CQI to the board.
The imaging and foodservice sectors made significant improvements based on the results provided by the director of quality. However, the methods employed didn’t seem to be as effective as they should. The production of substandard images in the imaging sector might have been either due to personnel or equipment. Nonetheless, recommendations include; sufficient shift rotations for the imaging area employees to reduce fatigue and promote efficiency. Secondly, the staff must undergo training to ensure they posses the required knowledge to run the equipment. Lastly, the machines must undergo regular maintenance to ensure they give the best images.
On the other hand, the foodservice sector should have strict supervision to ensure meals undergo preparations according to the specific recipes, particularly on the days that get the most complaints. Also, hiring personnel with the right skills should be a priority to prepare food as per the required standards. Additionally, in terms of skills, the hospital should educate trainees and the staff on the basic principles of CQI and their importance (Journal of Hospital Medicine, 2010). The above approaches will further ensure an improvement in the provision of quality services to patients.
In conclusion, to develop proper approaches to both sectors’ problems, additional data will be crucial. For instance, the imaging sector data will include the precise segment with the most re-dos, the physician ordering the most re-dos, and the gender, age, and health condition of patients with the most re-dos. Additional data will include the precise meal with the lowest rating in the foodservice sector, the days having meals with the lowest ratings and employees on duty on days with the lowest ratings. The CQI program will progress better once all the quality team understands all the aspects of the problems at hand.
