The Human Side Of Health Care: A Message Of Celebration And Hope For National Hospital Week

Acclaimed health care consultant Quint Studer says hospitals are changing drastically--and some of the most profound changes have nothing to do with high-tech drugs or breakthrough surgical procedures.

Gulf Breeze, FL - It's that time again. National Hospital Week is slated for May 14-18, 2005. Hospitals across the U.S. will hold special "thank you" ceremonies for employees, host open houses, and organize health fairs, "fun runs," and other community events. The point is to celebrate all the good that our health care institutions accomplish. And while most people define hospitals' success in terms of clinical advances and lifesaving medical procedures, Quint Studer says there's another part of the equation that is often overlooked: the human side of health care.

"Hospitals have made major strides in what I suppose could be called 'soft skills,'" says Studer, noted health care consultant and author of Hardwiring Excellence: Purpose, Worthwhile Work, Making a Difference (Fire Starter Publishing, 2004, ISBN: 0-9749986-0-5, $28.00). "There has been a paradigm shift over the past decade or two. Instead of viewing a patient as 'the gallbladder surgery in 302,' for instance, a hospital sees her as a person prone to stress, fear, and discomfort--and has institutionalized measures aimed at soothing and reassuring her."

Patient driven health care is a subject that's near and dear to Studer's heart. Indeed, his consulting firm, Studer GroupSM, recently received the 2005 SHCA National Healthcare Consumer Advocacy Award for its ongoing efforts to help turn around hospitals from the 5th percentile to the 95th percentile in patient satisfaction.

Studer says National Hospital Week--an annual event that began in 1921 to alleviate public fears about the "shrouded" institutions of the day--is the perfect time to celebrate what hospitals are doing right in terms of patient satisfaction. Here are a few of his observations on what top-performing hospitals do to give patients the kind of experience they want:

• They make communication a priority. Like any organization, a hospital is simply a group of individuals who come together to achieve common goals. It's clear, concise, direct communication--both employee/employee and employee/patient varieties--that make things work. Here are a few examples that illustrate how the best hospitals ensure that what needs to be said gets said:
  
  • Employees use "Key Words at Key Times" to alleviate patient fears. If a hospital has curtains between beds and a nurse walks into a room and pulls the curtains closed without saying anything, the patient might think that something terrible is about to happen. If the nurse simply says, "Mrs. Medley, we want to make sure you have privacy here at our hospital. Let me close those curtains for you," it puts the patient at ease.
    
  • They regularly communicate credentials. Great hospitals coach care providers to volunteer their credentials: "I'm Dr. Livingston. I've performed over 8,000 of these procedures during the past 10 years." It's amazing how a sentence like that can calm a patient's anxiety.
    
  • They communicate well (and efficiently) with family members. One recommendation that Studer Group offers its clients is that doctors ask families to organize a "communication chain." Every time a physician provides a medical update, the family member he or she speaks with takes responsibility for passing that information along to everyone else.
    
  • They make certain doctors and nurses communicate about patient care. The best hospitals are vigilant about clear, concise, and visible communication between staff members. Patients feel much more at ease when their care is well-documented by nurses who have their chart ready for the physician.

• They work hard to accommodate customers--instead of expecting it to be the other way around. In the past, hospitals adhered to rigid visiting hours. Family members and friends had to visit patients during a pre-determined narrow window of time. Today, recognizing that people heal better when they can spend time with their loved ones, more and more hospitals are expanding their visiting hours. As expressed in an email Studer received from an ICU manager: "We often forget that we are merely guests in our patients' lives . . . we shouldn't control the amount of time and support they give each other."

• They recognize that their patients' time is valuable. First, great hospitals don't make patients wait, particularly in emergency departments. Waiting causes prolonged pain and anxiety, and it can make patients feel like they don't matter to the hospital. If for some reason a wait is unavoidable, these hospitals make an effort to "update" patients periodically. On the other side of the "time" issue, great hospitals make it a policy not to cause patients to feel rushed. For instance, they ask doctors to sit down when they talk to patients and, once the visit is over, add a friendly, "Is there anything else you'd like to talk to me about?" These small courtesies can make a huge difference in patient perception of care.

• They know the hospital experience doesn't end once the patient goes home. Often, patients are confused about what to do after they get home from a hospital stay. But even if this isn't the case, they appreciate a follow-up phone call. And the best hospitals make these calls a matter of policy, insisting that physicians call a certain number of patients per day. "A woman told me a story about boarding her dogs with a veterinarian," explains Studer. "While she was on vacation she got a call. It was the veterinarian saying, 'I just want to let you know your dogs are doing great. So you don't need to worry about them. Just have a good time.' Why shouldn't patients get calls like this from doctors? If veterinarians can do it, why can't we? And follow-up calls are not just a 'feel good' practice. I read about a study on congestive heart failure that showed that when hospitals kept in contact with these patients, the number of re-admissions decreased significantly."

• When they make mistakes, they make amends. Obviously, despite all efforts to create a patient-centered experience, mistakes do happen. It's how hospitals handle complaints that makes all the difference. When they acknowledge that they made a mistake, they set the stage for recovery and also validate the patient's experience. Studer Group says that top-performing hospitals follow the acronym ACT: They Apologize, Correct the service, and Take action/make amends. "Great hospitals empathize," he points out. "Furthermore, they recognize that a complaint is a gift. It draws attention to a weak spot and allows the hospital to correct it."

• They use feedback to create a positive culture. While there are benefits to letting employees know when things go wrong, the converse is also true. Great hospitals make it a point to let employees know when things go right. They pass along compliments whenever possible. A culture in which positive comments are maximized helps attract and keep the best doctors and nurses, which in turn creates the best environment in which to receive care. "Patients actually play a big role in keeping care providers happy," points out Studer. "Tell a nurse who was most helpful during your stay--or write it on a patient satisfaction survey--and it will probably get back to that person and make his or her day. And that will keep the good employee happy, which in turn will keep him or her at that hospital."

• They make bills clear and understandable. No one enjoys receiving a hospital bill, especially with health care costs spiraling to ever-increasing heights. But worse than the bottom line is the confusing bill. And worse even than that is unresponsive "service" from the billing department. "Great hospitals recognize that, from the patient's point of view, the bill is the final dimension of care," says Studer. "They make sure the bill is understandable and accurate. And they provide easy access to information and are friendly and helpful when patients call with questions."

• They invest in great--and consistent--leadership. Of course, all of the "great" practices listed above don't occur in a vacuum. Doctors, nurses, and other staff members must be taught to do them. And that means hospital administrators must make quarterly leadership training a priority. Furthermore, they must make sure that leader training is standardized. "Reducing variance in leadership is crucial if we are to support and optimize the goals of improved clinical outcomes," says Studer. "We cannot have one without the other." Below are his top five ways to reduce leadership variance:
  
  • Use a common agenda. This approach aligns all staff to the same organization-wide goals, thereby connecting to the vision and mission of the organization. Second, it provides a single mechanism to cascade communication to staff so all employees understand the critical success factors both in the organization and in their individual work areas.
    
  • Align the evaluation process to your organization's critical success factors.
    
  • Ensure that each leader leaves every department meeting with a packet of information he or she can share with staff so that every employee hears the same information.
    
  • Choose a single common selection method for hiring new staff. All applicants should be asked at least two to three of the same behavioral-based questions regardless of the job for which they are interviewing. These questions should be geared toward values and ownership.
    
  • Collect from leaders the tough questions they hear from staff. Work with leaders to develop ways they can respond uniformly across the organization when they receive these questions. This exercise provides leaders with skills to address these questions, which builds confidence and also gives evidence of the organization's desire that all leaders have the information they need to respond to staff questions.

Of course, Studer points out, the above is just a sampling of the steps hospitals are taking to become more patient-friendly. The innovations he's seen are far too numerous to list. And as he heads to the 2005 What's Right in Health Care conference--an annual event hosted by Studer Group and attended by hundreds of executives from America's top hospitals--he expects to hear about even more ideas.

"I am always astonished and heartened by the commitment to excellent care we see hospitals exhibit at this conference," Studer declares. "America has always led the world in medical breakthroughs, and now we're seeing breakthroughs of the same magnitude in the 'human' side of care. We're realizing that a few well-placed words and a positive culture are as important as, say, a high-tech drug or ground-breaking procedure. That's the message I'd like to focus on this Hospital Week. And it's why I'm so proud to be a part of the health care industry."

About the Author:
Quint Studer, a former hospital president and 20-year health care veteran, is founder and CEO of Studer Group,SM headquartered in Gulf Breeze, FL. An executive coaching firm and national learning lab, Studer Group is devoted to teaching tools and processes that organizations use to achieve sustained focus on Service and Operational Excellence. Partner organizations see clear results in the arenas of higher employee retention, greater customer satisfaction, healthy financials and growing market share, and improvements in various other quality indicators.

A nationally recognized health care management thought leader, Studer was named one of the "Top 100 Most Powerful People" by Modern Healthcare. Studer has devoted his professional career to helping health care organizations become world-class leaders in Service and Operational Excellence. He has contributed to features in USA Today and Inc. magazine, and has authored in-depth feature articles on consumerism, service excellence, organizational alignment, and communicating quality to major health care trade journals.

Studer's 20-year career in health care management includes positions as COO of Holy Cross Hospital in Chicago and president of the Baptist Hospital, Inc. in Pensacola, FL. As a result of Studer's leadership, Baptist Hospital was awarded the prestigious Quality Cup by USA Today and the Rochester Institute of Technology. Studer led both hospitals to the top 99 percentile in employee and patient satisfaction as compared to hospitals nationwide in an independent health care survey.

Recently, Quint received the HFMA's Helen Yerger/L. Vann Seawall Best Article Award for 2003-2004. This award--given for his article titled "The Value of Employee Retention," published in the January 2004 issue of HFM--honors outstanding contributions to professional literature in the field of health care financial management.

Studer received B.A. and M.A. degrees in education from the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater. He has the honor of serving on the Board of Directors of the 32,000-member Healthcare Financial Management Association, a national professional organization of CFOs and finance executives in health care.

Studer is also the author of the newly-released 101 Answers to Questions Leaders Ask (Fire Starter Publishing, 2005, ISBN: 0-9749986-2-1, $16.00).

About the Book:
Hardwiring Excellence: Purpose, Worthwhile Work, Making a Difference (Fire Starter Publishing, 2004, ISBN: 0-9749986-0-5, $28.00) is available at bookstores nationwide, major online booksellers, or directly from the publisher by calling (866) 354-3473. Copies also can be purchased online through the Studer Group website at studergroup.com.