Klinisk Biokemi i Norden Nr 2, vol. 26, 2014 - page 32

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KliniskBiokemi i Norden · 2 2014
Utilizationof customer feedback
in a clinical laboratory
PaulaOja
NordLabOulu;Medical ResearchCentre, OuluUniversityHospital;
and Institute of Diagnostics, University of Oulu, Oulu.
Introduction
Customer perceptions are consi-
dered important in manufactur-
ing and service organizations (1).
There are several ways to obtain
customers’ views on products
and services, such as satisfaction
surveys, proactive surveys, focus
group interviews and customer complaints (2,3).
Organizations are advised to use various methods
because they may provide different kinds of infor-
mation. Customer satisfaction surveys and collec-
tionof spontaneous feedback (complaints)arewidely
usedmethods inhealthcareorganizations (4).Other
methods such as internet-based ratings of customer
experience (5,6) and patient safety incident reports
(7,8) are alsoused inhealth care.
The personnel of healthcare units, especiallyphy-
sicians and nurses, see how laboratory services are
ultimately realizedandhowwell the services respond
to theneedsof clinical units and individual patients.
This is why clinical laboratories need information
from their customers. The quality standards used in
clinical laboratories require the utilization of custo-
mers’ feedback to improve services (9-11).
Based mainly on experiences obtained in the
laboratory of Oulu University Hospital, this article
describes how customer feedback may be utilized
inpractice.
Customer satisfaction surveys
Questionnaires used in surveys should be carefully
planned. Questions or statements depend on the
purpose of the survey, e.g. onwhether the purpose
is tomeasure overall satisfaction level with labora-
tory services or to find out defects in services for
corrective actions (12,13). The final reporting form
should also be planned beforehand so that clear
conclusions can be drawn for decision-making (14).
The purpose of the satisfaction surveys targeted
at the clinical units of our university hospital and
the regional health centers was to find out topics
of dissatisfaction for possible corrective actions in
laboratory services (15,16). The statements in the
questionnaires were planned to be specific enough
and tocover subjects that are important in the service
process andwhich customers are able toobserve, as
well as subjects thatmay be prone toproblems. Our
questionnaires included an open-ended question in
the form “What is the most important problem in
laboratory services?”. Responses to the open-ended
question strengthened theviewof themainproblems
based on the responses to the closed-ended state-
ments, and they also revealedproblems not covered
by the closed-ended statements. In order to obtain
information on a specific subject from different
points of view, the same question can be presented
to different customer groups: clinics, health centers
andpatients.Additional informationcanbeobtained
whenquestions concerning the same subject arealso
presented to the laboratory personnel.
In a detailed analysis of our satisfaction surveys
the most common topics of dissatisfaction con-
cernedmissing test results, test turnaround times,
phlebotomy services and the use of the laboratory
information system. However, closed-ended ques-
tionsof thiskinddidnot reveal specificproblems in
the background, which iswhy further investigation
was carriedout in certain cases. For this reason, we
found it important to ask respondents to provide
their contact information in the questionnaire.We
alsonoticed that althoughacertaindefect in service
was corrected for all customers dissatisfaction did
not decrease in a later survey. On the other hand,
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