Improving the Customer Experience: Physician Feedback Program for Clinical Laboratories.

Area of Science:

• Clinical Laboratory Science
• Healthcare Quality Improvement
• Physician Feedback Systems

Background:

• Clinician feedback is crucial for enhancing laboratory quality.
• Existing methods for feedback collection are often not real-time.

Purpose of the Study:

• To pilot a program for collecting and analyzing physician feedback on clinical laboratory services in near real-time.
• To assess the feasibility and utility of point-of-service feedback.

Main Methods:

• Clinical laboratories distributed electronic or paper surveys to physicians.
• Physician responses were tabulated by College of American Pathologists staff.
• Free-text comments were promptly shared with laboratories for follow-up.

Main Results:

• Forty-seven laboratories participated, collecting 987 physician surveys.
• Electronic surveys yielded 951 free-text comments from 66.3% of respondents.
• The study demonstrated the feasibility of real-time feedback collection.

Conclusions:

• Point-of-service physician feedback is a viable strategy for clinical laboratories.
• This approach yields substantial, actionable information on laboratory performance.
• Customer perspective feedback is essential for laboratory quality improvement.