In health care, “customer” is often used to mean the person or entity buying the services. For example, an employer might be the customer of a health care plan which enrolls the employees. In the context of quality management, the customer is the person (or department) for whom services are provided. For example, the customers of the clinical laboratory include not only the patient, but the physician who receives the lab results, and perhaps the accounting department which must determine the charges. An important process in quality improvement is to determine who the customers are, what they need, and whether these needs are being met.