What are Standards of Performance and How Do They Impact Healthcare Culture?

This blog post continues our series of HealthStream Coaching's patient experience best practices. Every week we share information from our coaches that demonstrates their expansive understanding of the challenges faced by healthcare organizations and the solutions they have identified for improving the patient experience and patient and business outcomes.

How Do We Define Standards of Performance?

Standards of performance comprise the code of behaviors that clearly communicates the way you want every employee in your organization to act when approaching a customer or providing a service. Another way to think of the standards is a set of expectations used to define the specific ways that staff members are to conduct themselves in the work environment and during the performance of their duties.

Critical to high performance, the standards are also the framework for fulfilling your mission, vision and values. When specific behaviors are set forth that are representative of the organization and define how service excellence is achieved, employees are provided with a guideline for success.

How Do the Standards of Performance Impact the Culture?

In today’s healthcare world, customers are highly attuned to how well they are treated and the caliber of service they receive. They interpret their experience not by clinical criterion but by how well you personally connect with them. This connection is best made when their wants, needs and expectations are exceeded by the behaviors which constitute the organization’s standards of high performance.

The impact that the standards have on the culture of an organization, then, is to make it one wherein customers receive the kind of care that fosters loyalty due to the high level of satisfaction. The workforce has clear direction and is empowered to take ownership for behaviors that demonstrate cultural excellence. Consequently, the standards should be incorporated into all that you do, be reinforced routinely, and be a part of your reward system when an employee exceeds expectations.

About HealthStream Coaching 

Through on-site and remote coaching, we deliver a comprehensive roadmap to drive improvement in service and operational outcomes. Our coaches teach organizations across the continuum of care how to become more consistent in their processes through evidence-based tools, tactics, and best practices. We focus on strategies that have the greatest potential impact for rapid CAHPS improvement.