Do Your Homework
If you are extending your market, are you ready for it? Many hospitals tell me they are interested in extending their reach and developing a referral network within a distant market. Many of these hospitals have outreach personnel “selling” their services in those markets. This kind of outreach says “we are ready and you will like us!” On the other side of the equation, the physician and prospective patient give substantial forethought when going outside of their market and traveling for care. When this happens, your hospital has to be ready in ways you may not have considered.
For example, the coveted out of market patient has just experienced a surgical procedure and is ready to go home after a long day. All of the medical components to the visit worked well. There was a scheduling snafu so the actual procedure was delayed for a couple of hours so, it is 6pm when this patient is released. The drive home for this patient is in excess of an hour. What is likely to be extended or different for this type of patient?
Will the drive home require special handling – could the patient get dizzy or need to sleep? Should the patient be advised to spend the night in town? Will your hospital pharmacy be able to deliver normal expectations for this out of primary market patient? Can an educational element be added to make the sometimes two to three hour round trip be of more value?
What will the family member do if instructed by the discharge nurse that they should have a prescription filled before getting home. There was no pre-thought to the distance this patient would travel and no consideration to the fact the patient might need to access meds long before arriving home. What if the hospital pharmacy is closed? Ask yourself, is this the medical provider’s responsibility to think this through or the patient’s? If you want to please and impress that out of market patient and want others from that market to come, small details need to be considered that may see minimal but for the patient, they can be monumental.
Follow-Up
While all organizations provide discharge instructions, are these easy to understand, well organized and patient-friendly? Not to mention legible? Again, this is part of the lasting impression your hospital provides, make it count. It is also of considerable value – on the service side as well as effective medical care to have a provider or nurse conduct a follow-up call with the patient to discuss comfort and questions. This conversation can go a long way in helping a nervous patient have appropriate re-assurance and even un-do a negative service experience. This is also a great opportunity to collect input – just how did the visit go? Any issues? Logging issues from this first check-in conversation can serve as a service benchmark.
The Patient Experience – See It Through Their Eyes
Check, check your systems – are they as convenient as you believe? Does the parking valet or the receptionist believe they are “delivering” on your promise? If you are going to work hard to get the patient in the door, make sure you are delivering on the promise. Don’t have your hard work un-done with simple service elements. The patient is experiencing medical care and the associated service. For that patient, they are weighing the value and inconvenience of traveling out of their known market with the entire experience they have at your institution. You want to meet their effort head-on and leave them satisfied and maybe even a little surprised!
Tags: customer service, patient experience, service line marketing
