Service Delivery and Service Quality in Radiology

摘要

Because radiology departments are now often considered revenue centers, it is important for radiologists to understand customer service delivery and quality and what is required for customer satisfaction. Once you have identified your customers and how they assess you, you should put into place processes to improve your service to them and to satisfy these customers. Radiology departments have many customers, both internal and external, and often patients may not be their primary customers, but patients are the customers with the potential to create the most problems for departments if their demands are not met. Referring physicians are the primary or main customers of private radiology practices, and most departments based at academic hospitals or nonprivate hospitals also need to focus more on their referring physicians than most are currently doing. It is also important to understand the differences between service delivery and service quality. Service quality can be defined as meeting or exceeding the needs and expectations of customers, delighting customers, and providing what they want. Good service quality is not the same as good quality control or good quality assurance. Traditional quality assurance usually focuses on maintaining a quality level on the basis of standards set by an external body or regulatory agency. Continuous quality improvement (CQI) is a process that focuses on the improvement of performance indicators in radiology.