Secret Shopper
As a healthcare marketing and communications executive and former Public Information Officer (PIO), I have spent a lot of time in hospitals. And like many healthcare professionals, I try to avoid needing any healthcare services at all costs. (Healthcare providers are typically the WORST patients.) However, over the last couple of weeks, I have had an intimate look at healthcare as a caregiver, a new role for me.
My husband has had some health issues and underwent surgery last week. He is still recovering and frustrated that he is not already back to full speed, but doing much better.
I always feel like a secret shopper when I am on the receiving end of healthcare services. And overall, all of the people we encountered were fantastic. They were all caring and loving, especially knowing that this was a scary experience. It was the processes and, of course, branded experience, that could use some work.
First, let’s talk about patient experience and communication: We received no less than 8 separate confirmation calls, PLUS countless emails.
My husband and I each received separate confirmation phone calls and emails – most of the time confirming the same information, such as insurance and making sure we knew where to go for the surgery.
This is clearly a case of different groups needing information and not sharing it well internally.
Let’s just think about what this does to the patient:
You’re nervous about surgery already and then you get a phone call from the hospital. You are in the middle of work, potentially meeting with a customer or in the middle of a business meeting, but your watch starts buzzing that your phone is ringing. You step out of the meeting to answer, because IT’S THE HOSPITAL. On the other end of the phone is a cheerful nurse confirming that you will be there at the right time and location. For the 6th time. Stress shoots up and then frustration sets in.
We receive 3 different sets of surgical instructions – all of them varied. So, day-of, we are not exactly sure if we are doing the right thing, even though we’ve had a million different phone calls about it.
One of the discrepancies was what to actually expect for the day-of surgery. I was under the impression that it would be about 5-6 hours total. We were there for 11 hours and almost everything ran on time.
Better utilization of internal processes, such as using the available tools within Epic (or the EMR) so that we did not receive countless confirmation emails and between communication cross-department is needed here. Basically, consistent communication and patient engagement is key.
How often do we hear “patient communication is the solution”? But what does that mean? If there were standardized tools for the nurse to pull and send to the patient – so that every patient receives the same information, every time, that would help both the nurse and the patient immensely.
Yet, most internal marketing teams are not resourced to develop this type of material. Marketing teams have KPIs focused on driving patient volume. But what if looking at improving patient communication DOES improve patient volumes? If patients are happy, they tell their friends, post on social media, and THEY do the marketing for you.
The second area of opportunity that I uncovered as a “secret
shopper” was the branded experience. And let’s be honest, only someone like me,
who is focused on marketing and branding for a living, would notice. But I
realized, as we were sitting in post-op, that we could have been in any hospital
anywhere in the country. There was nothing about our entire experience that set
it apart from the competition.
I am NOT talking about plastering the logo everywhere (I mean, WHY is it necessary to put the logo on the soap dispensers and light switches? That is just a waste of money). I am talking about making the entire experience special to your brand.
Hospital rooms everywhere look exactly the same. All nurses and doctors wear the same scrubs. It even smells the same. Often, especially in smaller markets, the same physician operates at multiple different locations – so not even the doctor is unique. (How weird is post-op anyway? Just a bunch of people who are all out of it, all shoved in a room together. There was one poor woman who could not stop throwing up. I am still convinced that following my c-section, I was shoved into a closet or hallway somewhere.)
Is it possible to rethink some of this, in a branded way, that makes life better for both the staff and patient? Such as specific language (think about Chick-Fil-A’s “My pleasure) or a hospitality mentality, like a hotel GM hiring a metal detector service to find a lost wedding ring.
McKinsey & Company has just come out with an interesting article about “creating a culture of excellence” for the hotel industry. Here is a link to the full article: Exceptional Customer Experience. And while a stay in a hospital is not a luxury hotel experience, there are still some things that we can learn from the industry and creating excellent experiences.
It is a lot harder to make general patient experience recommendations, especially when this argument is that most hospitals are exactly the same. So think about how your brand can stand out in how you treat people, so that the experience is the differentiator, driven by the brand.
If your brand promise is to provide exceptional care, how does that manifest as a patient experience? Maybe its as simple as asking the patient, “are you receiving exceptional care? If not, what can I do to improve that?” Or the nurse simply saying, “here is how we are working toward your exceptional care today.”
The is the golden goose that everyone is trying to achieve, and few are succeeding. It is much easier said than done, but would be a fun project to work on.