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Total Customer Satisfaction: A Comprehensive Approach for Health Care Providers
Written to provoke thought as well as design innovation, this guide to designing attractive accessible housing is a timely resource. As the growing senior living market demands convenience as well as aesthetic value, its principles will serve designers and builders well.

Baby boomers have never been content, progressing through the stages o
The health care industry is experiencing a pendulum shift towards customer-based service. How can professionals raise the bar?

In 2006, the leading-edge wave of baby boomers will begin turning sixty. Always known for approaching the world on their own terms, they still insist on the highest standards when it comes to customer service and satisfaction.
These demands will soon dominate the health care industry as senior baby boomers receive necessary check-ups and treatment, and they will certainly influence how care is delivered to patients. Numerous surveys have shown that, to no one's surprise, they expect more of their health care providers than previous generations. They want customer service, as it exists in the retail world, to become standard in medical care. They look at their doctors as peers rather than authority figures, and ideally want a cooperative, communicative relationship with practitioners. They are likely to independently research their own medical concerns and question professional opinions.

Health care professionals not aware of these tendencies soon will be, as senior baby boomers make up an increasing proportion of patients in waiting rooms across the country. Smart health care professionals and industry business leaders are already figuring out how they can appeal to the tastes and care requirements of tomorrow's seniors. Those that successfully adapt to health care's changing landscape, embracing the concept of customer service in health care, will excel at pleasing senior baby boomers.

It's here that Stephanie G. Sherman and V. Clayton Sherman's Total Customer Satisfaction: A Comprehensive Approach for Health Care Providers comes in. Identifying a "pendulum shift" towards customer service in the health care industry, the authors present a well-rounded, action-oriented plan for responding to new customer expectations and improving rates of satisfaction among patients. First explicating their Total Customer Satisfaction concept, they move on to elucidate all the bases that must be covered to achieve the ideal, illustrating points with helpful figures, tables and examples. Their model and recommendations are based on breakthrough methods being put into action by hospitals and health care organizations that have been nationally recognized for their outstanding customer satisfaction ratings.

This book represents a how-to guide not only for health care providers, but also administrators and industry marketers who have perceived the growing importance of customer service in health care and want to establish a precedent of patient-centered care. As the baby boomers become seniors and need more often to avail of quality health care, companies and providers who can convey an authentic belief in quality customer service will have a decisive edge.
f their lives, to malleably conform to expectations. Now advancing on retirement age – the leading-edge boomers begin turning sixty in 2006 – they have set about redefining retirement and senior living, life stages they have previously associated with deterioration and diminished independence. To keep up, builders, developers and designers are consumed with the task of developing living spaces that will appeal to the tastes and later-life aspirations of the large, and largely wealthy, baby boomer market. Builders, designers and company marketers who successfully relate to the baby boomers' self image as vibrant, engaged people will realize rapid growth as the boomer market moves en masse into its retirement life stage.
Gracious Spaces tackles the question of how interior spaces can be adapted to the needs of aging and/or disabled residents without sacrificing comfort and style. It is a conceptually broad work that offers canny advice to architects, interior designers, builders, and other professionals charged with producing accessible living for the aged and disabled. The authors, experts in universal design, include before-and-after living plans and photographs to illustrate how, as they posit, it's possible to create from any existing interior space a comfortable, attractive and barrier-free environment for seniors and people with special needs. They explain their motivations in writing the book:
"Homes that are truly welcoming to all – and homes that will serve their owners' needs through all stages of life – have moved up as design priorities for an affluent, aging population...This attractive volume tells designers how to capitalize on this trend by creating accessible home designs so beautiful and stylish, that they appeal to anyone, at any age ... residential universal designs can please the eye, the mind, the heart and the spirit."
As baby boomers join the ranks of mature adults, they will swell further an already growing demand for spaces that meet seniors' needs. Senior living facilities will continue to proliferate, as will as age-appropriate renovations and design make-overs for seniors' home living spaces. Higher standards will become the norm across the board. Gracious Spaces is tune with this call for quality and strong aesthetic principles. Its recommendations should be taken to heart by professionals in the field before any attempt is made to address the challenges presented by the new senior living market.

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