Customer and personnel satisfaction in hospitals - a case study of three finnish hospital districts' measuring methods

Abstract

Nowadays most public sector organisations are measuring customer and personnel satisfaction. Usually the key figures of these surveys are part of the balanced scorecard or other follow-up systems. Also. this information is used in customer and personnel strategies discussions. This means that the effects of the satisfaction surveys are reflected in the quality of customer service and the personnel working environment. Despite its significant role, there is only a limited amount of information concerning how the data are collected and the types of indicators organisations used in their balanced scorecard or other follow-up systems. According to the customer-oriented view it is important to clarify what kind of key figures are used in the customer and the personnel perspective. If these key figures are too unidimensional or we cannot trust the information sources, the balanced scorecard's information will be unreliable. In such cases, the organisation bases its strategy on a misconstruction. The purpose of this paper is to study what kind of methods hospital districts use to measure customer and personnel satisfaction and what kind of role customer and personnel satisfaction surveys have in the balanced scorecard. In this research, I shall consider only those indicators which measure the customer or personnel aspect. The empirical analysis is composed of eight qualitative theme interviews from three different hospital districts during spring 2007. The main finding of this research is that all three hospital districts measure customer satisfaction. Besides information from surveys, hospitals collected customer feedback internet and feedback forms, for example. The revelation was that only one hospital district in three measures personnel satisfaction. In general, they took care of the well-being of the personnel through development discussions. According to the results, the balanced scorecard was not a common follow-up system. Only one hospital district enforced it in all units. In this case, the hospital's balanced scorecard also involves indicators based on Finnish law, the so-called treatment guarantee. The customer satisfaction surveys had a more significant role in the balanced scorecard or other follow-up systems than personnel satisfaction surveys. This research showed that the original idea of the balanced scorecard was not verified. The balanced scorecard seems to be more a follow-up system than a system which inspires discussion.