VALUE
IMPROVEMENT
LEADERS
TOPIC #5
524 words + 2 activities  | 45 minutes (2 reading, 12 video, 30 to develop a VOC plan)
VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER
PRINCIPLE
Understanding your patients’ needs and wants helps you develop stronger processes. But you don't speak for your patients; you have to ask.

TOOL
VOC analyses such as critical to quality tree. 

APPLICATION
1. Watch the VOC video.
2. Discuss VOC with your coach and develop an appropriate plan for your project.
The Customer is Always...

We all know that patients can be wrong. They often come in with information they’ve gathered on their own. When my wife opted for an ablation over Flecainide, against her cardiologist’s recommendation, his accusatory response was, “You’ve been reading the Internet, haven’t you?”

Our customers are paying us for expertise (information and care provision). Listening for the voice of the customer doesn’t abdicate authority in medical decision making nor devalue the expertise the customer seeks. Such misguided thinking is akin to the notion that patient experience scores are raised by prescribing antibiotics for a virus.
Why Listen For Voice of Your Customer?

In short, because you don’t speak for your customer. 

The thoughtfully engaged customer provides insight. And with that insight, you can develop a stronger future state process.

When those of us in the health care field use generalized statements such as, “Patients want…” or “Patients must…” we’re on dangerous ground. Even with all the institution’s expertise, we have significant blind spots. Our work benefits when the voice of the customer shines a light on those spots.
How to Hear the Voice of the Customer

Satisfaction survey results and comments, our Patient Design Studio , small facilitated groups of patients - these are all excellent sources of customer voice. 

A simple tool called a critical to quality (CTQ) tree can help organize and facilitate a discussion with customers. CTQ does not provide mind reading capabilities - engaging the customer is still required.

Don’t forget your internal customers (aka, downstream process stakeholders). They certainly have some thoughts on the critical aspects of a high quality interaction.

Please be wary of home grown surveys. They are hard and time consuming to develop. Anyone can scribble out some questions and post them on Survey Monkey. Not just anyone can design a meaningful survey and have it validated. 
Where Does VOC Fit in the Methodology?

Lots of places. You might want to perform a VOC analysis as part of project definition, baseline analysis, investigation, or improvement design. 

For example, when discussing patient education for new ileostomy patients as part of improvement design phase, the value improvement team moved the conversation from a conference room with three surgeons and five nurses to living rooms of former and current ileostomy patients. They were asked, “What do you wish you had known?” The resulting patient education products were far superior to anything we could have produced without the key customer insights.
ACTIVITIES

1. Watch the VOC video  (11:30) that includes an example CTQ tree.

2. Discuss VOC with your coach and develop an appropriate plan for your project.



LINKS


Quickly locate all course videos, slides, and previous emails here .


LEARN  |  CONNECT  |  EXPLORE  |  ABOUT
Accelerate | University of Utah | healthsciences.utah.edu/accelerate
Questions? Email:  kim.mahoney@hsc.utah.edu