As a patient experience consultant, here are the five most essential points I bring to my
consulting clients, whether they’re hospitals, outpatient facilities, or other
healthcare environments and practices. Improving patient satisfaction, customer
service and the customer experience, and, of course, HCAHPS scores:  Here are eight key points I find myself
emphasizing frequently (as a consultant and professional keynote speaker) in
hospital and other

1. Great customer service means
systems as well as smiles. When Mayo Clinic
overhauled their scheduling system they employed)industrial engineers using
stopwatches to time wheelchairs between appointment locations in order to
ensure that correct scheduling algorithms were created.

2. Not-for-profit hospitals and institutions in healthcare
can benefit by recognizing and embracing their inherent organizational advantage over for-profit
institutions, as follows: It is easier for the
employees to identify with the aims of an organization that doesn’t have profit
at the center. If you’re not for profit, be aware of this advantage and make
the most of it.

3. Bullying and disrespect lead to
turnover. According to a recent study, working
in an environment characterized by bullying increases turnover intentions of
nurses, and employees report high turnover intentions whether directly bullied
or simply in a work unit with bullying. 
(You didn’t need a study to tell you this, so search out and destroy
bullying before it destroys you.)

4. Every single employee needs to know
how to handle customer complaints and concerns. Even if handling the concern means “I’m finding you
someone right now who can address this” it’s far better than “I can’t
help you, I’m the wrong person.”

5. Much of what’s wrong in patient satisfaction and customer
service is related to poor use of language, and to nonverbal
“language” cues (such as hospital
employees avoiding eye contact with civilians in the hospital, and acting like
they are “other” from us).

6. A blame-free environment leads to
improved transparency, improved systems, and, ultimately, to better results. This has worked to make The Ritz-Carlton a great culture,
and it can do the same for your hospital. Horst Schulze, founder of the
modern-day Ritz-Carlton brand (and now Capella and Solis), frequently says
“If a mistake happens once it may be fault of employee. If it happens
twice, it is most likely the fault of the system.”  So, they get to work fixing the system. So
should you.

7. Strive to deliver service on the schedule of your patient, not just a schedule that happens to be convenient for your
institution. For example: Avoid 
unnecessarily long waits for lab results to be distributed; this
practice is disrespectful and even cruel.

8. You’ll make the most progress on
HCAHPS, and as an institution, by
taking a relatively broad approach to the subject. Being too selectively
focused on the individual HCAHPS questions can actually backfire. A more
effective and powerful goal is to create an organization-wide halo effect that
raises your scores as well as your actual rate of referral — not just the
hypothetical “willingness to recommend.”  (For a longer
piece of mine on HCAHPS and company culture, you may want to spend a minute
with this recent article.)

Micah Solomon is a patient experience speaker and patient
experience consultant and patient centered care consultant, as well as a
patient experience keynote speaker, patient centered care speaker, and
bestselling author. Click here for two free chapters from
Micah’s latest book .