Developing a service-oriented health care culture

To remain competitive and respond to consumer expectations for high-quality service, organizations in the health care industry must develop a service-oriented culture. This article describes a series of program steps to increase an organization's responsiveness to both internal and external customers. Of fundamental importance is understanding that employees' capacity to provide high-quality service to other employees and customers is directly related to the quality service they receive as internal customers of their organization's day-to-day management. Prior to summarizing specific program steps to develop and sustain commitment to a service-oriented culture, recommendations are provided for managing top-level support.