Conscious Improvement: Start by Reducing ‘Silly Meeting’ Time

Vague solutions to a vague problem will yield vague results

Tue, 04/24/2018 - 12:03

Customer satisfaction surveys are all the rage these days. Healthcare has a couple of “800 pound gorilla” surveyors whose services (and nontrivial expense) have been pretty much forced upon it. In many cases, targets are set that are used to drive reimbursement.

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A client once shared a 186-page quarterly summary from one such vendor (most of it worthless; I gave up at page 28). I noticed two frequent tendencies: 1) when current percentile performance was less than 50th, the number was color-coded red (obviously nobody wants to be below average); 2) next to their number was what they called a “trend” showing the latest three months’ performances as a line graph.

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Submitted by TPW on Tue, 04/24/2018 - 10:04

When discussing customer satisfaction surveys I've heard similar suggestions that there is no point in collecting the data if the results are stable:

"If there has been no change in satisfaction in more than a year, why is this organization continuing expensive data collection to tell it the same thing?"

I see your larger point about monitoring not changing anything, but I don't understand why results that indicate no change would be less valuable than those showing an improvement or decline. 

Thanks for commenting. Deming:  "Statistics on performance do not improve performance."  My point is that if all you're going to do with the result is react the same way you always do, you're going to get the same result.  Doing another expensive survey is waste -- you may already have a wealth of information in the most recent stable history.  IF possible, why not take some of the data already collected to see whether you can aggregate enough to stratify down to a focused opportunity (as I suggest). 

If all you have is the ranking itself and not the actual survey data, you have no idea what to do and need to do some temporary collection that digs into process inputs.  If that's the case, put your money there for now rather than yet another survey that gives you the same answer. 

Subsequent survey results can show whether you've "bumped the needle" with any intervention.

This is a very typical scenario.  In such cases, people tend to react to the latest result with no idea of the true context of variation.  Right now, percentile ranking is a number that makes executives perspire ("Can't be below 50th !") and even drives some reimbursement.  The charts show that the number in islolation is worthless -- the average of its history on the other hand lets you make a relatively accurate estimate of your ranking, which is about as far as its usefulness goes.  But, as I see it currently practiced, it's sheer crazy-making. It's like someone thinking that weighing themselves 10 times a day is going to decrease their weight.

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