FEATURE
cluding notes about what they heard, saw, felt, smelled, touched and tasted. Every staff member should call the ASC, ask to speak to another staff member and be transferred. Additionally, each employee should simulate the experience of going through the ASC as a patient, entering the waiting room, going to the front desk and to pre-op, changing clothes, entering the procedure and recovery rooms and then being discharged. The sensations tour experience will likely bring forth numerous ideas for improving the ASC experience for the patients and their family.
Fresh Eyes An alternate approach that can be used to help see your ASC through the eyes of a patient, employee or physician is to have someone take pictures or video everywhere that a patient, employee or physician may go, including nurses’ stations, break rooms, operating rooms,
the lobby, restrooms, the post-anesthe- sia care unit and pre-op. Ask partici- pants to identify dirt, rust, clutter, etc. Ideally, the person to do this should not be someone who comes to the ASC on a regular basis since his or her vision may be impaired by conditioning. When you look at the pictures or
film, ask yourself “What message does all of this send to our customers?” This will likely be an eye-opening exercise.
Decide and Define the Real Measures of Success Surveying the customer is critical to monitoring efforts, but the actual mea- sures you use to define success could be different. For example, a critical mea- sure often cited in patient satisfaction surveys is, “Would you recommend the ASC to a friend or relative?” How about also asking, “Did you recommend the ASC to a friend or relative?” and try to
find out if the person that they spoke to actually came to the ASC. If not, why not? While it’s nice to hear positive comments about a patient’s experience, it is worthwhile to determine the impact of a good experience and to learn all you can about a bad experience. This advice is valuable when col- lecting feedback from your ASC’s phy- sicians and staff. How many of your physicians have actually recruited an- other physician to join the ASC? If not, why not? Do you know why staff mem- bers left your ASC? Isn’t staff turnover ultimately the endpoint measure of staff satisfaction and effective hiring deci- sions? Have you ever studied why a patient came to your ASC? If it was be- cause of a physician, why did the physi- cian recommend your ASC? One measure of effectiveness of
your service efforts is case volume. Just because volume is increasing, however,
20 ASC FOCUS JANUARY 2013
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