Department-Wide Survey Process: Ensuring Every Client Is Given the Opportunity for Input

Summary

Impact Statement: 
The Allegan County Health Department used QI to increase of the percent of department programs that perform client satisfaction surveys from 33 to 81%. As a result valuable feedback from clients is enabling the department to provide services and programs that better meet the needs of its community.
Summary: 

Using the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) quality improvement (QI) process, Allegan County Health Department (ACHD) implemented a department-wide client survey process. There was not a standardized department-wide client satisfaction survey process and only 33% of the programs in the department offered a client satisfaction survey. It is essential to get client input in implementing a community needs assessment and making programmatic changes in the department. To improve the population's health and well-being in our community, the clients need a venue to be able to provide input. Input allows for effective evaluations of programs and interventions to deem if they are appropriate. ACHD increased the percentage of programs that offered a systematic client survey process during this project from 33% to 90%.

The aim statement for this project was as follows: “From June 1, 2012 to September 30, 2012, increase the percentage of ACHD’s programs that implement the department-wide survey process from 33% to 75% to provide clients and stakeholders an opportunity for input.”

Organization that conducted the QI initiative: 
Allegan County Health Department
Citation: 

Joynes, A. Public Health Quality Improvement Exchange. Department-Wide Survey Process: Ensuring Every Client Is Given the Opportunity for Input. Fri, 02/24/2017 - 12:04. Available at http://phqix.org/content/department-wide-survey-process-ensuring-every-client-given-opportunity-input. Accessed March 29, 2024.

Submission Status: 
Completed
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

eich0117's picture
Submitted by eich0117 on

Would next steps relevant to this project include settting a target of a certain percent of program areas that actively use the resluts to identify improvement opportunities?

up
0 users have voted.

Alex Elizabeth

Submitted by ajoynes on

Hello! Very good question! Yes we have placed expectations on each program at the health department that in their 2013 strategic planning process there was a objective focused on implementing the survey process and another objective that focuses on using the data to identify new quality improvement opportunites. Until this process and utilization of the data collected becomes part of our cultural norm our CQI committee felt we needed to have objectives embedded in our strategic plan to continue momentum.

up
0 users have voted.

Submitted by Georgianna on

Our LHD is also engaged in a PDCA for customer feedback. We're in our Check phase now, and feeling as though our feedback isn't constructive enough -- they really love us! It's great, but isn't specific / measurable enough to be 'useful' data. The team is revisiting the survey questions. Would you, or any other PHQIX users be willing to share your survey questions?

up
0 users have voted.

Georgianna Wood
Accreditation Coordinator
Humboldt County DHHS Public Health

Submitted by Kay Conley on

I think this is a great idea for a project. We have client surveys but they are all different, depending on the program, the department and the staff. I was wondering how the survey was administered? Hard copy, online (surveymonkey) etc...Also I can imagine you would collect general information that would be useful for all programs/clients but are there specific questions about individual programs? I'd love to see the survey questions as well. I think find it's very hard to find sample survey questions for alot of topics.

Kay Conley, Stark County Health Department
Canton, OH

up
0 users have voted.

Kay Conley

Submitted by ajoynes on

Great questions. We also have many different programs and provide services in the field, in clinics, in homes, and etc. We did online and paper surveys dependent on the program. Our clinics were more sucessful with paper surveys but the environmental health programs have had sucess with the electronic version. We have a survey template I would be willing to share. All of our programs start with this template because we can get aggregrate data across the whole department. Each program then added up to 5 questions that were more program specific for their individual program at the end of their survey. Their is a whole process that has been developed but all of our surveys end up in SurveyMonkey so that we can aggregrate data easier. Let me know if you would like our survey template. This survey template came from the Michigan Public Health Institute and those questions were validated.
It was a great project and now we are using the client data and input in our strategic planning as well as for implementing other QI projects.

Angelique Joynes, Allegan County Health Department
Allegan, MI

up
0 users have voted.

Submitted by acheney on

Our health department is addressing the issue of a lack of a uniform customer satisfaction procedure. Currently, we only have customer satisfaction for our general clinic and programs where it is required for grants. We would really like to assess how the public views the health department and their knowledge of our services. Needless to say, this is a big issue and I so appreciate that there is guidance like this out there!

up
0 users have voted.

Abigail Cheney

Submitted by jgoodern on

We are preparing to roll out our agency wide customer satisfaction survey. You mentioned Environmental Health staff. Our EH team is very anxious about the types of comments they will receive from places they regulated.  Could you share your experience with this? I try to assure them comments will be mostly positive, the questions are more about the staff behavior and really have nothing to do with the result.  But I can understand their concerns.

up
0 users have voted.