Cardiology wins excellence award for customer service
The Clinical and Academic Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Whittington Hospital NHS Trust delivers specialist care for complaints and illnesses regarding the heart. It also teaches at undergraduate, postgraduate and undergraduate nursing levels. In July 2009 it achieved Customer Service Excellence (CSE), assessed by the inspection body SGS United Kingdom Limited. SGS is a global group that operates in over 1000 offices worldwide, leading in inspection, verification, testing and certification services. The CSE standard is a Government tool to help organisations put customers at the centre of their work. The cardiology department has a long tradition of developing high quality customer service. On behalf of the Whittington, it delivers specialist care to inpatients (through Montuschi Ward, outpatient clinics, the cardiovascular investigation unit, outreach work in rehabilitation and heart failure, and in the anticoagulant and stroke prevention clinics) across five primary care trusts in GP surgeries, community pharmacies and community hospitals.
“Our goal was simple. We wanted to improve our services and encourage staff to think more broadly about customer service. We recognise that this process helps the culture of being open to ideas, which can improve the way we deliver our services. It also enables us to be more accepting of any critical comments, which can motivate us to improve in areas where we fail to deliver as high a quality services as we aspire to,” says Professor David Patterson.
The SGS assessor reported that the department showed “a deep understanding and a commitment to Customer Service Excellence. The commitment was found from senior management levels through to operational and front line staff.”
“The Whittington Hospital NHS Trust has now adopted an explicitly customer focused approach to the development of its services at a corporate level, “says SGS assessor, Tom Banks. “This is largely a reflection of the work over the past 12 years of the Clinical and Academic Department of Cardiovascular Medicine. The corporate and departmental approaches now demonstrate an excellent level of synergy in their mutually responsive strategies to the development of customer responsive service.”
“There are many areas of good practice,” adds Tom Banks. “The anticoagulant and stroke prevention community based clinic service, in particular, is an excellent example of best practice.” As a result, he is recommending notifying the service to the Cabinet Office for consideration as an example of transformational practice.
Last updated06 Oct 2009