Definitions typically discuss quality as measured by the customer .
For example, nursing service is a customer of pharmacy, physicians are customers of diagnostic testing and all departments are customers to some extent of administration. Thus when we attempt to measure quality by surveying customers in long term care, we must survey the department of the institutions for they are customer. The present study intends to do just that - gather data from staff of long term care institutions in order to gauge quality from their perspective. A technique to be employed is one gathered from marketing - the focus group which is a form of qualitative interviewing. The American Health Care Association has developed comprehensive customer satisfaction surveys in which resident and family focus groups were used to develop questions for the various survey instruments.