Soft Quality
An activity falls into the category of "soft quality" when the way it is designed or carried out creates the perception of action without challenging status quo. Soft quality became very popular in health care in the 1980s when hospitals were struggling to find ways to meet the new regulatory requirement for the existence of quality programs without making waves inside their buildings. Leaders learned that activities of soft quality allowed them to appease surveyors without having to go through the pain of promoting change.
While anything can become a form of soft quality, the most common activities that fall into this category are mass education, the creation of new forms, discipline of the frontline workforce and committee meetings. A provider could tell surveyors that it had held 87 mandatory inservices, created 70 new forms, disciplined 214 employees and held 162 committee meetings since their last visit and the surveyors would generally go away happy without ever asking the critical question of what difference it made.
Soft quality gave birth to a general perception in health care that as long as we have lots of activity going on we must be accomplishing something. If the surveyors had asked the critical question, they would have found that eighty percent or more of those improvement activities in many settings yielded no value-adding improvement for the patient or the organization. It simply created a great show. It is currently estimated that health care spends about forty cents (or more) of every dollar it earns on administrative functions that serve no purpose. A significant percentage of that money is spent on activities of soft quality.
For far too many healthcare providers, patient satisfaction is a form of soft quality. They send out the surveys, collect the data, aggregate the data and look at the data. Yet, that data never or rarely contributes to the creation of value-adding change. Providers who cherry pick their questions to ensure good data engage in the worst form of soft quality.
Providers who accept soft quality in their patient satisfaction systems are their own greatest victims. A healthy and robust patient satisfaction system is health care's gateway into the minds and perceptions of its constituents. When done wisely, it becomes a powerful business tool for understanding your strengths, weakness, threats and opportunities.
Patient Satisfaction Blog
The debate over qualitative versus quantitative data is heating up in health care as providers look for ways to effectively measure and manage patient satisfaction in an increasingly competitive market place. The answer doesn’t live in choosing one or the other. It is found in learning how to marry the benefits of each in a [...]
Effective measurement of patient satisfaction is much more than just sending out surveys and aggregating results. When effectively woven into a quality program, it allows a provider a final opportunity to connect with the patient, determine what would foster patient loyalty in the future and catch those issues that have angered patients but slipped through [...]
Providers that manage patient satisfaction measurement as one more form of soft quality in today’s environment choose to increase their risk of ending up as a casualty along the highway to health care’s future. An activity falls into the category of “soft quality” when its design and implementation creates the perception of action without it [...]
The impact of a patient satisfaction measurement system is influenced by how important it is perceived to be by the patient.
An effective patient satisfaction system works to be responsive to the four major consumer groups.
An effective patient satisfaction system helps an organization to better understand those patient value propositions that are most important to the consumers of health care services.
An effective patient satisfaction system is proactively aligned with the changing needs and dynamics of the patient relationship.
Always build your surveys to support achieving the Ten Commandments of Patient Care.
Quality begins on the inside... and then works its way out. -- Bob Moawad
Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves. -- Dale Carnegie
Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable. -- Lord Chesterfield
Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. -- Andrew Carnegie
Change does not change tradition. It strengthens it. Change is a challenge and an opportunity; not a threat. -- Prince Phillip of England
