Getting the Most from Your Patient Relations Department and Service Recovery Program
Target Audience
Nursing leaders and patient advocates.
Overview
Service Recovery is often defined as making right what the patient or family member perceives went wrong in the course of their health care experience. It is a way to promote patient involvement as important healthcare team members, and a commitment to excellent service recovery distinguishes your health system from others. Through case-based discussions, this program describes the importance of service recovery to your organizations quality of care and bottom line. A model for service recovery is provided, along with guidelines for documenting concerns and strategies for improving complaint capture. Lastly, a method of trending documented concerns will be discussed and data on the effectiveness of the method presented.
Learning Objectives
- Participants will describe the importance of service recovery and the costs of dissatisfied patients to their organization;
- Participants will understand how efforts in service recovery can distinguish your organization from others;
- Participants will understand one model for providing service recovery in their organization;
- Participants will recognize that patient complaints can:
- Provide information on high malpractice risk physicians/practice sites/medical centers/organizations
- Provide information regarding systems issues in practice sites/medical centers/organizations
- Provide quality improvement information to healthcare professionals/practice sites/medical centers/organizations
- Provide early warnings about potential risks and provide continued surveillance of healthcare professionals/practice sites/medical centers/organizations;
- Participants will identify the elements of a well-documented complaint;
- Participants will discuss the distinction between a complaint and a grievance and effect responses to both;
- Participants will describe one way of compiling and aggregating patient complaints.
Proceeds from CPPA educational programs go to Vanderbilt Center for Patient and Professional Advocacy, and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine for research and education purposes.