More Hospitals Turn to Hospitality as Front-Office Elixir
The five-minute videotaped skit showed a hospital clerk calling a prospective surgery patient at home and interrupting his shower only to leave him, dripping and irritated, on hold.
The clerk and the patient talked without really listening to each other, and nearly exchanged sharp words. Their conversation ended with bad feelings on both sides.
Some of the 10 hospital employees watching the skit chuckled, perhaps recalling similar misunderstandings with patients. Seminar instructor Sonia Ramos then turned off the television and asked the class to analyze what went wrong.
By the end of Ramos’ three-hour training session, her students would learn how critical it is to their jobs and to the hospital that they master basic telephone etiquette and other patient-relations skills.
Workshops like the one Ramos led last week at Northridge Hospital Medical Center are representative of the latest efforts by some San Fernando Valley hospitals to stay ahead of the competition.
The hospitals are discovering that the hottest marketing strategy is based on a simple formula: old-fashioned hospitality.
“The things that go into good medical care, such as equipment and facility, are only one component,” said Jeff Flocken, senior vice president of Northridge. “You really need good interaction with patients as well.”
Flocken said market research by Humana Inc., a hospital chain based in Louisville, Ky., found that a patient who has a good experience at a hospital tells three people about it. If the experience was bad, he tells 10.
To make sure that good things will be said about them, four of the 10 largest hospitals in the Valley, including Northridge Hospital Medical Center in Northridge, Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Panorama City, Veterans Administration Medical Center in Sepulveda and Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, have or are planning patient-relations training programs.
“We can identify with bad service in a restaurant or a hotel,” said Wendy Bauer, an instructor with Northridge Hospital’s education department. “We know that usually it’s because of the impression created by one employee, either over the phone or in person. The same thing happens in a hospital.”
Some Valley hospitals, such as Northridge and Valley Presbyterian, are buying commercially prepared training programs, known as guest relations programs, that offer books and workshops on everything from telephone manners to handling hostile patients.
Some programs offer a few cassette tapes and inspirational slogan buttons. Others come complete with packaged instructional materials, videotapes and four to five days of consulting time, said Norman Burns, president of Personal and Professional Development, an Illinois firm that sells hospital training programs.
Several programs feature role-playing exercises and encourage participants to practice what they learned. For example, after one training session at Northridge, participants were assigned to look for patients who seemed lost and offer them directions.
The programs run from $1,000 to $100,000, but the hospitals believe the word-of-mouth advertising generated is well worth the price.
Valley Presbyterian invested about $10,000 in “The Competitive Edge,” a program offered by La Canada Flintridge-based Mediatec. But the actual cost of implementing the program, including the cost of paying employees to attend, could be 10 times that amount, said Faith Rossman, director of health education at Valley Presbyterian.
Northridge, which kicked off its guest relations program in October, bought the same program but paid extra to have the program custom tailored, said Kathy Flaherty, Northridge’s public relations specialist.
The hospital also had Ramos translate the instructional materials into Spanish so that housekeeping employees who only speak Spanish could also participate.
The hospital’s video department also plans to dub the video training tapes into Spanish, Flaherty said.
Decline in Patients
Guest relations programs are growing in importance because many hospitals have been losing patients, Rossman said.
Between 1980 and 1984, seven of the 10 largest hospitals in the Valley experienced decreases in hospital-bed occupancy of between 0.5% and 28.2%, according to figures provided by the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.
At only two of the 10 largest Valley hospitals, Kaiser Foundation and Holy Cross, did occupancy increase during that period, according to the state health office statistics.
Lake View Medical Center, whose occupancy rate plummeted from 50.6% to 22.4% during that period, was the hardest hit. The hospital went into bankruptcy, but has been able to make a comeback under Chapter 11 reorganization efforts, said Richard F. Pierce, the hospital’s executive director.
Pierce credited “You Can Make a Difference,” the guest relations program the hospital started six months ago, with contributing to the hospital’s recovery.
‘Doing Something Right’
“We’ve had continued growth over the last 12 months, so we’re doing something right,” Pierce said. “I’m sure this has something to do with it.”
Republic Health Corp., a hospital management company based in Dallas that took over management of Lake View after the hospital filed for reorganization, has 97 facilities in 25 states, Pierce said. Almost all of them use guest relations programs, he said.
Although Veterans Administration Hospital is not as susceptible to market forces because it is federally funded to serve veterans, it is also planning to implement a guest relations program--one designed in-house, said Rocco Bellantoni, assistant to the hospital director.
Bellantoni said that Veterans will draw on personnel from several departments to put together training sessions on topics such as ways to reduce waiting time for patients.
But not all Valley hospitals are sold on the idea of structured programs.
“We feel that a smile program is a very superficial guest relations program,” said Sister Therese Kohles, director of mission effectiveness at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.
Instead, Kohles said, she works closely with hospital personnel, helping employees set goals that promote the nonprofit hospital’s charitable mission.
‘Hire the Right People’
The hospital’s mission is also made clear to potential employees in the interviewing process, said Linda Roberts, program marketing manager for the hospital. “It’s much easier to have good guest relations if you hire the right people to begin with,” Roberts said.
Barbara Meyers, administrator of Canoga Park Hospital, a small private hospital started 21 years ago by a group of West Valley doctors, said Canoga has no formal guest relations program, “but we practice it.”
“It cracks me up that all of a sudden it’s a wonderful new thing.”
Meyers said that Canoga Park has long been aware of the value of word-of-mouth advertising. The hospital doesn’t have the money to spend on commercial training programs, but it tries give patients extra touches of personal attention, Meyers said.
“We spend a lot of time with our patients, and the food is out of this world,” said Meyers, who still makes weekly rounds to greet every patient.
Despite the skepticism of some hospitals, the marketing of guest relations programs is a expanding industry. Seven years ago, there was not a single hospital guest relations program on the market, said Kristine Peterson, president of K. E. Peterson Associates in Chicago. Now there are about 40 firms nationwide offering such programs, said consultant Burns.
Of the 7,000 hospitals in the country, about 20% now have some kind of guest relations program, Burns said.
Adapting Programs
Companies in other industries that have long used in-house guest relations programs are also marketing their programs, Rossman said. For example, San Diego-based Pacific Southwest Airlines and Walt Disney Productions in Burbank, both sell versions of their own guest relations programs, she said.
But guest relations programs are not the cure-all for a hospital’s financial woes, Peterson conceded.
“All hospitals and all employees can benefit from a guest relations program, but I feel there’s a certain aspect of organizational readiness required,” she said.
Peterson said a hospital that recently had a lay-off is not a good candidate for a guest relations program. “The employees would wonder, ‘Why does the hospital talk about cost containment and now they’re putting me through charm school?’ ” Peterson said.
Most of the Northridge employees in Ramos’ class, however, seemed to appreciate the program. After a role-playing exercise in which she pretended to be a patient, Janet Jacobsmeyer, a radiology technologist, said, “Now I have more understanding of what the patient is going through. When you start seeing the other side, your temper doesn’t seem to flare as much.”
The training sessions have also helped to improve relations among hospital staff members, Jacobsmeyer said. “Once you start listening to how you’re talking with patients, you start listening to how you talk with everybody.”
