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Competitive
Advantage
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By
Toni
Fitzgerald Once
the realm of upscale clothiers, customer service has found a new domain.
Faced with an increasingly competitive marketplace, hospitals are
searching for new ways to keep patients happy. Patients
first The
18-month-old Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas, has funneled
plenty of energy into customer service. “We’re trying to
identify where customer satisfaction problems are,” said Covenant
spokesperson Eddie Owens. “We have employee action teams devoted
to it, and we survey results every quarter.” In addition, all
new employees go through customer service training. Sharon
Rose, RN, a nurse at the medical center, says the customer service
class didn’t teach her anything new, but she does think the training
is important. It impressed on her one jarring idea—the customer
is always watching, whether it’s at 4 p.m. at the hospital or
4 a.m. at the gas station. “The patient may think you’re
the best thing that ever walked the earth at the hospital, but then
they’ll see you in a store somewhere yelling and screaming, and
it gives a different impression,” she said. Overall,
the course was a gentle reminder—patients always come first.
“It was fun, a little sterile,” Rose said. “But it
keyed the point that no matter where you are, the customers are watching.
That’s something I’d never thought of.” Still, no new system comes without naysayers. At Lubbock, nurses complain that some of the training is more common sense than customer service, Rose said. Nonetheless, she adds, they suggest physicians take the course, too. “Everyone’s saying if we do it, they should do it, they’re the ones who need to. So that’s the next step.”
Customer
service training has yielded tangible rewards for Inova Fairfax Hospital
in Falls Church, Va. Complaints have dropped from 25 per 1,000 patients
to almost zero, while compliments have risen by nearly 100 percent. The
course focuses on “moments of truth” between patient and
healthcare provider. “Every moment of truth at the bedside poses
as customer service,” said program founder Thom Mayer, MD, Inova’s
chair of emergency medicine. “It teaches those skills, and it
makes the patient happy, which is our goal.” Though
it started six years ago as an in-house class, Mayer and partner Robert
Cates, MD, have since taken their eight-hour show on the road. Mayer
estimates he’s done 250 presentations, drawn from the customer
service practices of user-friendly corporations such as Nordstrom,
Wal-Mart, and Disney. “When
I got started in this, I found people were being held accountable
for skills in which they were never trained,” Mayer said. “The
reason we should get this right, is … it makes our job easier.” Financial
sense The
people who run Celebration Health, a 60-bed Florida hospital dedicated
to the universal care delivery model, agree. At Celebration, there
is no ICU, PCU, or other separate unit; patients remain in one room
throughout their stay, regardless of the type of care they receive.
The move is cost-efficient and patient-friendly, said Administrative
Director Kathleen Mitchell, RN. “You
have the same nurse at your bedside when you have cardiac arrest as
when you’re discharged,” Mitchell said. “We’re
trying to make standard care extra special. Patients see we have a
beautiful facility and assume we’ll have the latest electronic
equipment. But we want to stage an experience for them, and that starts
with service.” Though
Celebration is barely 15 months old, response so far has been favorable,
Mitchell said. The required customer service training seminars haven’t
hurt, either. But ultimately, customer service comes down to listening to patients, said the AHA’s Wade. And a good place to start is with the hospital gown. “We need to listen more to the perceptions of our patients,” he said. “Do you think the hospital gown would still be around if we’d started doing this earlier?” |
