title: Implementing the patient circle. Call on patients to help improve perceptions of health care quality.
abstract: Adapting the quality-circle concept to a health care setting helped one hospital solve a problem and boosted its image among patients. The "patient circle" technique is one step health care providers can take toward delivering "total customer value," a quality perception that can mean the difference between surviving and thriving in the future.
authors.affiliation: Department of Marketing and Management, Wheeling Jesuit College, WV, USA.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ostasiewski
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Fugate
mesh_terms: D015285:Hospital-Patient Relations; D008332:Management Quality Circles; D009936:Organizational Innovation; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D014481:United States