Building a Trusting Relationship with the Community

Building and maintaining trust with the community is a key component of being able to provide effective healthcare. Trust in the healthcare system is a powerful tool in building relationships between providers and customer-owners, which can lead to better health outcomes. One key method for building trust is to make changes to the system based on customer-owner feedback, and then communicate that the changes were made so that customer-owners can see their feedback shaping the system.

At Southcentral Foundation, there are multiple systems in place to capture customer-owner feedback. These include direct customer-owner feedback, post-appointment surveys, advisory committees, Elder councils, and more. SCF prioritizes making changes requested by customer-owners, incorporating their feedback into the strategic planning process and ensuring that improvements to services are shaped according to their wishes and values.

Once changes and improvements have been made, SCF is careful to ensure that they are communicated to customer-owners. There are several methods SCF employs for this purpose. One is the Anchorage Native News, a newspaper published by SCF’s Public Relations department which informs customer-owners of new services, changes to the system, events, opportunities, and more. SCF also hosts the Annual Gathering, which is an event for customer-owners to learn more about health and wellness services available at SCF and in the community. SCF also makes use of social media for this purpose.

One example of an improvement that was made and communicated to customer-owners was SCF’s New Generations project, which provides support for families in the preparation for and care of new generations. Information about the New Generations project was communicated to customer-owners through the usual channels, and in addition, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, New Generations sent out activity booklets in response to families being at home with children. This was written up on social media and families submitted pictures of masking activities and similar things.

SCF’s commitment to making improvements desired by customer-owners, and communicating those improvements, is part of the reason why SCF has been able to achieve 97% customer satisfaction. For more information about SCF’s communication and improvement methods, or any other aspect of SCF’s Nuka System of Care, feel free to contact the SCF Learning Institute.