Revenue Cycle

Smiles, improved processes will help maintain and improve your market share

Patient Access Weekly Advisor, August 1, 2007

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Retail businesses often say that "the customer is always right." Hospitals are beginning to adopt another motto-"the customer should always be happy."

Pricing transparency, quality-of-care information sharing, the rush of consumer-driven health plans, and the shift of healthcare costs to the patient only further the need to achieve this goal.

To that end, visit every avenue possible to ensure that you retain your customers.

Depending on who your customers are, that could mean opening a Starbucks inside your facility, adding leather couches, or improving the quality of the gift shop.

But officials at one Washington state organization decided that improving internal processes-and the internal approach to customer service-would keep customers happy, attract business, and turn a profit.

"We woke up early in the game," explains Kelley Meeusen, a former health information and compliance coordinator and privacy officer who helped spearhead a successful customer service initiative at Harrison Medical Center (HMC) in Bremerton, WA.

"We realized that you're there to provide healthcare as a service to your customers. You're serving your community as a whole, right down to the care encounters," he says.

Opening ceremony

Step one for HMC was hiring a vendor to conduct confidential customer service surveys among customers and staff. Officials knew that the organization needed improvement, but weren't sure just how much and in which areas.

"We found that it was rather dismal. We needed a little bit of help everywhere," Meeusen says.

The vendor that HMC hired broke down the survey results by unit.

"We could use [those] data to see who was doing what right and who needed improvement, and we could identify best practices throughout our own organization," he says. The vendor also benchmarked the results with similarly-sized organizations around the country.

Surveying every employee-from medical staff to janitorial staff-also gave officials insight into how the workers viewed their connection to customer service.

The starting lineup

Following its surveys, HMC used a simple three-tier approach for its renovation:

1. Measure the data that you have

2. Plan how you're going to improve your operation

3. Implement that plan

HMC began by measuring the results from its surveys. Officials learned that customers were most unhappy with the following:

  • Repetitive questioning from staff
  • Confusing customer information tools (e.g., brochures)
  • Unclear postcare instructions
  • Long emergency room wait times

    Before HMC officials could tackle these problems, they designed a staff hierarchy. First, they put HMC's registration department director in charge of the customer service initiative. The second line of authority was the director of the quality improvement department.

    Beneath that position was HMC's improvement committee, which met weekly. The group consisted of managers from all of the hospital's departments.

    "Large groups don't get any work done, but they do share information," Meeusen says. "It's an excellent tool to break down the silos within a hospital."

    However, getting to that point had some bumps, Meeusen explains. It took a considerable amount of advance work to get staff on board with the initiative. "Not everyone sees the connection between what they do and customer service and improving the bottom line. We had to make that connection [clear] to them."

    When HMC officials started seriously discussing the initiative, they set up a celebratory rollout gathering for every employee during which they explained what they were doing and why.

    Proving you can improve

    HMC officials listened closely to the concerns of their patients. First, they sought to eliminate the repetition of their registration process.

    "[Patients] come to the registration desk and tell the person there that they're sick and that they want to be taken care of," Meeusen says. "When they get handed off to the nursing unit, they have to tell their whole story again. It's understandably aggravating for them."

    HMC devised a way to streamline the different registration processes into a single point-of-care registration.

    "We get them into a room first, then start getting the information down," says Meeusen. "That way, we only have to collect the information once." HMC officials addressed the second big patient aggravation-confusing informational tools-by revamping all of the facility's brochures.

    "Patients don't know how the healthcare delivery system works. Typically, the patients would receive a stack of paperwork, and half the time that stack would end up in a pile in the lounge," says Meeusen.

    "We did what we could to avoid duplication of messages. And we had the department managers learn how to write the material in jargon-free language so the patient could actually understand the information."



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