“BEST: Building Excellent Service Together” is a system-wide, employee and customer focused program tthroughout Shands HealthCare.

The BEST program provides a foundation to:

• connect all our efforts across the Shands system to achieve our short-term and long-term goals
• improve internal communications at the department level, as well as across the organization
• facilitate change in our organization
• create a culture of service excellence by encouraging customer-focused behaviors that will improve our patients’ experience when they receive care at our Shands facilities

Customer Service Team

• Customer Service Teams across the system represent all our facilities and major programs.
• Team Leaders work with specially chosen groups of employees who use their expertise and knowledge of the organization to focus on specific issues.
• There are teams focusing on these areas:
• Reward & Recognition
• Employee Engagement/Retention
• Physician Engagement
• Inpatient Satisfaction
• Outpatient Satisfaction
• Service Recovery
• Emergency Department (ED) Satisfaction
• Outpatient Satisfaction
• Each facility has an Initiative Champion who coordinates activities for their site.

More Information about the BEST Initiative

• Five Pillars of Excellence
• Nine Principles of the BEST Initiative