Addressing Service Recovery with Radiation Oncology Frontline Managers to Improve the Patient Experience: An Evaluation Study

Abstract

The subject of providing service recovery in radiation oncology has not been researched at length. At present, the relationships among patient satisfaction, care compliance, and treatment outcomes suggest patients who report dissatisfaction with their care perceive receipt of suboptimal care. Patient satisfaction also plays a role in defining the quality of care received, potentially affecting institutional reimbursement and reputation capital. This study explored frontline management’s role in effective service recovery, the process of actively addressing identified instances of patient dissatisfaction directly to improve the overall patient experience through patient engagement and finding solutions to challenges early using an explanatory sequential mixed methodology approach. Secondary data conveying patient perceptions of care, survey of frontline managers to quantify the knowledge, motivation, and organization influencers on intervention protocols, review of service recovery documents and artifacts, and probing interviews triangulate the problem of practice and offers insights and solutions for consideration. This dissertation broadly examines patient and institutional benefits of proactively addressing patient engagement and solution-finding through service recovery, converting poor perceptions of quality of care toward an appreciative engagement between radiation patients/consumers and care providers.