Patient Experience is Job One for Everyone Working in a Hospital

By Dale Wolf

Perhaps no industry should be more centered on improving customer experience than healthcare … where the experience has enormous personal implications and where buzz around experiences at hospitals can dramatically impact market share and revenue growth.

At a recent HealthLeaders Media event, it became apparent that C-level managers are catching on fast to the validity of patient experience as something that is directly affected by how management approaches its employee relations.

One example that you could be easily replicated in any organization came from keynote speaker Al Stubblefield, president and CEO of Florida’s Baptist Healthcare Corporation. He talked about the importance of sharing “feel-good moments” with employees. When a friend of a patient wrote to praise hospital employees and departments for the excellent care his friend received while hospitalized, the organization created a video of the man reading the letter and showed it to employees. Accompanying slides highlighted the individuals and departments he mentioned to show, as Stubblefeld noted, that “everybody makes a difference.”

Kate Fenner, CEO of healthcare consulting firm Compass Group, “There are a lot of factors that impact patient satisfaction, with outcomes being the obvious to top the list. But equally important in shaping the patient’s perception of one hospital compared to another include physician satisfaction and employee satisfaction since these drive clinical quality. Hospital leaders must set the environment for exceeding expectations for care outcomes, accessibility, waiting time and how well such factors align with the hospital’s brand promise.”

Fenner added, “In an era where maybe a third of hospitals lost money, patient happiness is crucial for gaining market share and with market share comes the ability to negotiate better payments from payers. Everyone in the organization from patient registration staff to surgeons and nurses to various clinicians and support staff to senior managers — everyone must see delighting the patient as Job One.”

Filed Under: Patient Experience