You awaken, look outside, and see that the ground is covered with snow. You did not see it snow, but not seeing it snow does not discount the fact that it snowed.
A patient calls your hospital and over a period of three hours their call is placed on hold and they are transferred from person to person as they try to schedule a follow up appointment. You did see the person calling, you did not see their bad experience. You also did not see the hundreds of other people each day who called the hospital trying to accomplish one task or another.
The fact that neither you nor your colleagues saw those people having disastrous patient experiences does not discount the fact that they did.
These types of experiences happen at every hospital every day. They are unseen and unmeasured. Nobody in the hospital knows about them. And if nobody knows about them those bad experiences are treated as though they do not exist.
There are people who know about those bad experiences. Those people do not work for your hospital, they are your future patients. Those are the people on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube.
It has been snowing every day at your hospital and until someone does something about it the snow will keep getting worse. Either that, or it may be time to by a bigger shovel.
so true everywhere one looks unless awareness is acute….
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Thanks Len
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