Have you ever had that sinking feeling that comes over you after saying the wrong thing at the wrong time? Often referred to as sticking your foot in your mouth, the sensation is, unfortunately, part of the human experience. Filtering your statements before opening your mouth is a great cure for foot-in-mouth disease.

It’s one thing to filter your own thoughts before speaking, but quite another when you overhear a colleague say something that could easily shatter patient confidence in the organization. At that point, unfiltered or even inappropriate remarks go beyond socially embarrassing and become professional y damaging. This happens more often than you might think When damaging remarks are made, customers are often so put off by the statements made by an employee that they choose not to say anything, but rather take their business elsewhere.

It’s been said that numbers don’t lie. If that’s the case, why do so many health care professionals (including managers and supervisors) immediately fall back on denial and excuses when confronted with patient satisfaction survey scores?

Have you ever wished you could read your
customers' minds and know exactly what
they think about their experiences with your
organization?

Imagine walking into Nordstrom’s or Macy’s, expecting to enjoy a quality shopping experience. Instead you find clothing crumpled on the ground, sticky fingerprints all over the display cabinets and inattentive salespeople taking personal calls on their cell phones.

“How are you doing?”, “Paper or plastic?”, “How was everything?” We’ve come to expect questions such as these in specific situations, and when we hear them, they tend to stimulate an automatic, if not somewhat mechanical response within us. In these situations, many of us are unknowingly following our own unwritten scripts.

We know that health care consumers gauge a quality experience by measures such as how they were treated and the compassion they felt. These are elements of a health care experience that have always been difficult to quantify and measure through objective surveys.