How to Get Your Hospital on the National News

Front office staff, listen up!

You could find yourself in a very embarrassing spotlight that negates years of advertising, millions spent on upgraded facilities and more millions on attracting physicians, nurses and specialists to deliver care.

I just happens that we have a recent case history for how to destroy a hospital’s reputation.

Talk show host Glenn Beck was, according to his story, actually ignored by the front office staff when he came to the hospital in severe pain. He decided to do a short video about the way he was treated — not by the doctors but by the administrative staff. His video was picked up by the Drudge Report, posted on the front page of AOL.com, and now over 600,000 people have seen it on YouTube and CNN.

GLEN BECK VIDEO

Beck from the Dead

At the hospital, I was treated more like a number than a patient. At times, staff members literally turned their back on my cries of pain and pleas for help. In one case a nurse even stood by tapping his fingers as if he was bored while my tiny wife struggled to lift me off a waiting room couch.

I’ve now seen our system at its very best and I’ve also experienced it at its very worst. But in each case, the difference had nothing to do with whether the hospital had the latest equipment or whether it looked like the Taj Mahal. It had to do with compassion. It had to do with respect. It had to do with treating people the way you’d want to be treated when going through something unfamiliar and frightening.

That’s why I don’t want to hear anymore about universal health care or HMOs or the evils of insurance companies until each and every hospital in this country can look me in the eye and tell me that they their staff is full of truly compassionate people who treat their visitors like patients, not products. Hire and train the right people, and then and only then come talk to me about everything else you need.

Beck from the Dead is Not the Norm

Now, to be sure, most healthcare professionals do wonderful things, miraculous things every day. I’ve worked with many hospitals over my career in marketing and saw the compassion. I watched car accident victims who could not walk or talk brought back to life by compassionate people. I’ve watched burn victims, and leukemia victims, and crippled children all get incredible care. I hear the compassion in the voices of the nurses and therapists. I’ve even seen nurses cry at the plight of their patients and scream for joy at the birth of a new child. I believe in my heart that this is the way it is in most hospitals.

But it is the weakest link that will break any organization.

Kari Kemper’s experience in the blog posting just below this one is not as dramatic as Glenn Beck’s, but it is an example of a staff person just not centered in on the customer’s experience. There is an indifference exhibited in the way she was being admitted to receive care. Equally clear, this staff person was not equipped with the technology to deliver a great customer experience (or to accelerate the hospital’s cash flow). But she also may not have been trained and certainly did not show the compassion you would expect in a place of healing and care.

Glenn Beck’s rant started as he entered the hospital lobby and reached millions of people. Kari’s was not as dramatic and did not make YouTube. But neither example should have happened … not in a hospital.

Avoid the Rants and Complaints

So if you want to stay off national television with horror stories, there can be no weak links. Your patient access staff are the front door to your hospital. Yes, I know … it is hard just to keep these positions filled. I see the huge number of help wanted positions for patient access staff all over the Internet. But this position is in some ways, the most important at establishing from the get-go an experience that will cause each patient to brag about how well they were treated.

A Great Patient Experience …

… must be delivered consistently by every single person who touches the patient’s visit to the hospital.

Finding caring people to handle patient registration might be difficult. Training them should not be. And surrounding them with a culture that propels everyone to be compassionate and professional should be a priority. And equipping these people so that they can deliver a great experience during registration should be given serious consideration so that this great experience is done with speed and accuracy.

These are simple steps to keep your hospital off YouTube. More yet, they are at least one step to counter the negativity now being dredged up by the Glenn Beck’s of the world. This one experience at one hospital is all over the media … Beck’s saying from his sick bed that “I have stories that will melt your brain and it is a time for a wake up call.”

From the time I was an orderly (I think they’re called transporters these days) at a hospital while in college studying pre-med, to all the years spent with physicians and staff at hospitals in the midwest to help them with marketing and PR to tell their wonderful stories, I have seen the good and the bad … but mostly the good. That’s the story I want to see on YouTube. And it all starts when the patient is registering to get care. This should be a good experience, delivered with compassion.

Filed Under: Patient Experience