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In United States healthcare, service excellence is the ability of the provider to consistently meet and manage patient expectations. Clinical excellence must be the priority for any health care system. However, the best healthcare systems combine professional service excellence with outstanding personal service. Although health care in the United States is touted as the “world’s largest service industry,” the quality of the service is infrequently discussed in medical literature. Thus, many questions regarding service excellence in healthcare largely remain unanswered.
Service excellence in healthcare is difficult to define and better described as a “I know when I receive it, or perhaps more frequently, I know when I have not.” According to Robert Johnson , service excellence has four key elements: delivering the promise of quality healthcare, providing a personal touch, doing a more than adequate job and resolving problems well.
In order to achieve these elements, healthcare institutions, in particular, must be concerned with reducing the drivers of dissatisfaction, and providing exceptional healthcare. According to the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality , exceptional healthcare is defined as “doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right person, and having the best quality result.”