John wrote:
>Now, I'm very supportive of considering the student as a customer. If
>only schools took that notion as seriously as businesses do, many of their
>problems would go away. However, there are other customers whose needs
>must be served (nearly) as much as the students, and some of the most
>important of them have measurable outcomes that are much closer than 10
>years.
We had much the same discussion in class over the weekend in the context
of healthcare. One student noted that the word customer describes someone
(or some group) "without peer". In healthcare today there are a number of
people/groups all competing for the "prize" of being called the customer.
>From a hospital systems point of view, the patient, the physician, the
employer and the insurance company all were candidates for Customer
status.
After discussion (and it wasn't a relaxed chat, either) the group seemed
to land on the position that the word has no place in healthcare. They
proposed two substitutes: Consumer is the direct beneficiary of healthcare
or wellness services (commonly called the patient) and Stakeholder (or
Constituency) describes every other individual or group in the system.
Does this have any application in a school setting?
Bill Braun
--Bill Braun <medprac@hlthsys.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>