Customer Service - VISN 17 - VA North Texas Health Care System

Service Recovery

VANTHCS’ approach to Service Recovery involves identifying designated Service Partners who will act as first-line Patient Advocates and attempt to resolve patient complaints at the service level before higher level intervention is needed.

VANTHCS has implemented a Service Recovery Program, which includes elements of "comping" our veterans and guests. The program deals with providing excellent customer service for the veteran patient's or guest's encounters with our healthcare system, and recovering when those encounters do not work out as well as we would hope.

VA North Texas Health Care System has on staff eight highly-skilled patient representatives who are eager to help you with your concern in a timely manner. The Patient Representatives —

To reach a patient representative, phone 214-857-0482 or 1-800-849-3597 ext 70482.

Speak to the Director

The Speak to the Director program was established to provide patients, visitors and employees the opportunity to provide feedback in areas needing improvement or to acknowledge someone doing a good job.

Speak to the Director boxes are located at all three facilities. The boxes are checked daily and forwarded to the Correspondence Manager for assignment to the appropriate service for action. The responsible service is asked to contact the patient/writer by telephone to resolve their concerns. If telephone contact cannot be made, a letter is prepared for the Director’s signature.

The correspondence received through the Speak to the Director program is tracked to help identify areas where improvement is needed or areas in which we excel.

Quick Cards are comment cards, readily available throughout VA North Texas Health Care System, that give our veterans/guests an opportunity to give us timely feedback on their perceptions of the care and services. The information is used to target areas needing improvement and/or compliment staff exceeding the expectations of our customers.

The cards are located in both inpatient and outpatient areas. You may answer your quick card anonymously or you may provide your name and contact information if you would like us to contact you about the resolution of any issues.

After your visit, you may receive a confidential questionnaire in the mail asking you about your most recent outpatient or inpatient treatment at our medical center.

Please use the survey to let us know of any concerns, complaints, or questions you have about your care, so that we can resolve them. We also appreciate compliments about what we are doing right.

Inpatient Ward Greeter Program

The Inpatient Ward Greeter Program is an organization of employee volunteers who visit inpatients on a weekly basis. The Inpatient Greeter assists patients by helping resolve concerns and provide assistance when needed. The Inpatient Greeter attempts to resolve patient complaints at the service level before higher level intervention is needed.

Act as the point of contact for the patient to resolve complaints and document both patient complaints and compliments.

Report all concerns, complaints and suggestions to the coordinator for follow up with appropriate service.

Let patients know that we are interested in their feedback and their opinions matter.

The Inpatient Ward Greeter Program was implemented in Dallas in March 2005. The program deals with providing excellent customer service for the inpatient within our healthcare system, and "recovering" when those encounters do not work out as well as we would hope. This program helps us to identify problematic areas or trends and helps determine where we need to focus our improvement efforts. This program allows staff to quickly respond to patient concerns and needs thereby improving our service to our patients.

Ambassador Program

Members of this group are trained for service on the front line, as hosts or patient greeters in various areas of the facilities. Patients and visitors can turn to “ambassadors” when in need of assistance. Located principally at the main patient entrances and ambulatory care clinics, ambassadors greet guests, provide directional assistance and address issues of concern. Ambassadors are available Monday-Friday, 7:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

A telephone call will be made to medical and surgical patients within three days of discharge to offer assistance with any post-hospitalization concerns.

VANTHCS developed a Mystery Shopper program to help improve the service that we provide to our patients. Mystery shoppers are employees who volunteer to be trained to “shop” for everything from health care services to customer service. "Shopping" is when the volunteer visits the service, makes observations and writes a report that is sent to the Director. The purpose of the visit is to help identify areas for improvement. The goal of this program is to improve processes to better serve our patients.

This Customer Service initiative improves our communication with patients and family members while protecting privacy and confidentiality. It also allows patients and family the freedom to move around the facility and still be confident that they can be contacted by facility personnel at any time. Pagers are currently in use at Dallas VAMC in Day Surgery and Pharmacy. Signal coverage is from the basement to the 4th floor, and new expansion areas are being reviewed. VANTHCS's goal is to have these pagers in all the Outpatient Clinics, Urgent Care/Admission area and Diagnostic areas. As donations become available to expand the project, we will implement the pager system at the Ft. Worth and Bonham facilities. These pagers were donated by individuals and service organizations. Voluntary Service has this project listed as one of the current needs for service organizations to support.