U.S. Healthcare Discussion Misses Key Point: Customer Service

Americans Demand Healthcare Service and Will Switch Providers to
Find Better Care, According to New Study by Katzenbach Partners

Poor Service Can Drive Patients Out of the System and Hurt
Healthcare Organizations

To Improve Service, Providers Must Do More Than Talk About Care -
They Must Become "Empathy Engines"
NEW YORK--(Business Wire)--
The current U.S. healthcare discussion misses a key variable: U.S.
healthcare providers may succeed or fail based on the quality of their
customer service.

Poor service drives Americans to switch providers, or drives them
away from better-qualified providers, leading to inefficiency, higher
costs and lower quality of care, according to a new report, including
a survey of 1,003 Americans, by Katzenbach Partners entitled The
Empathy Engine: Achieving Breakthroughs in Patient Service. Katzenbach
Partners is a management consulting firm focused on helping large
companies improve organizational performance.

The report says healthcare providers should respond by ramping up
the quality of their customer service and becoming "empathy engines" -
transforming their organizations to allow frontline employees to focus
on patient problems and innovate to deliver solutions.

This imperative applies to the full spectrum of healthcare
players, including hospitals, clinics, payers, vendors and pharmacy
chains, according to the report.

"We talk about access to care and that's a critical question but
it's only part of the story," says Jenny Machida, an Engagement
Manager at Katzenbach Partners and co-author of the report. "It's
important to bring people into the healthcare system but it's equally
important to provide an experience that keeps them in the system, that
really solves their problems, and at the same time makes the entire
system more efficient and effective. In practice that means managing
the healthcare organization so that it really listens and cares."

"The good news is that most healthcare workers are naturally
empathetic," adds co-author Traci Entel, a Principal at Katzenbach
Partners. "But the organization needs to be managed to let that
empathy come through."

Americans Care About Healthcare Customer Service and Will Switch
Providers to Find Better Service

Americans have extensive first-hand experience interacting with
the healthcare system. The vast majority - 84 percent - have been in a
hospital or clinic in the past three years, either as a patient (50
percent) or visitor (60 percent), according to Katzenbach Partners'
recent survey of 1,003 Americans. But when their experience is not
positive, they are willing to vote with their feet:

-- One in four Americans has switched or considered switching
doctors (26 percent) or hospitals or clinics (23 percent)
because of negative experiences, according to the research.

-- More than half (52 percent) say they choose hospitals and
clinics based on whether they believe employees understand
their needs. (Only one in five choose based on convenience.)

But Americans Feel Healthcare Customer Service is Poor: Some Think
It's Worse than Airline Service

Americans in large numbers give healthcare customer service poor
marks - and as a result are making decisions that lead them to seek
care elsewhere:

-- One in four Americans say bad experiences have caused them to
use (12%) or think about using (12%) walk-in centers to avoid
hospitals, clinics and doctors' offices.

-- Healthcare customer service lags behind other industries -
sometimes in surprising and disturbing ways. While it's not a
surprise that most people (51 percent) think hotels are better
at customer service, nearly half (40 percent) thought banks
provided better customer service than hospitals and clinics.
Shockingly, a significant number (18 percent) think that even
airlines are better at customer service than healthcare
providers.

-- These bad perceptions are based on real experiences - nearly a
third of visitors (32 percent) and nearly a quarter of
patients (23 percent) said healthcare employees did not do a
good job of making them feel like their individual needs were
understood.

But Great Customer Service Can Solve Major Problems with the
Healthcare System

The impact of poor healthcare customer service goes beyond patient
or visitor satisfaction: It affects the efficiency, quality and cost
of care, and the retention and motivation of highly skilled and scarce
healthcare workers, according to the report. Conversely, great
customer service can lead to major improvements in the healthcare
system:

-- Improved customer service has the potential to contain cost by
limiting no-show appointments, the inefficiencies caused by
switching providers (especially duplicated tests), and
malpractice suits.

-- Better customer service increases the satisfaction not only of
patients but also of employees. That, in turn, improves
retention of key personnel - in particular nurses, who are in
critically short supply.

-- By making patients more willing to stick with their provider,
better customer service improves continuity of care, which in
turn improves quality of care.

Reform is Possible: Healthcare Providers Can Leapfrog Other
Industries and Become Empathy Engines - Models for Great Customer
Service

Despite the poor marks they currently receive, healthcare
providers have the potential to lead in customer service - not only
matching but leapfrogging other industries, Ms. Entel says.

"Empathy is what draws many workers to the healthcare industry in
the first place," Ms. Entel says. "They're a reservoir of empathy that
healthcare providers can tap. They excel at improvising and finding
small but important solutions. For example, Texas Children's Hospital
empowers its employees to solve problems on their own. They acted on
their own to bring in a mechanic to fix a door when a mother and child
needed privacy. At the Mayo Clinic, the staff found a way to schedule
appointments more than six months in advance - in spite of the
limitations of the computer software - by creating their own
improvised system. In each case, this wasn't something they were asked
to do - it's something they did on their own."

As a result of that natural talent pool, "Healthcare providers
don't need to radically revamp their organizations," Ms. Entel says.
"But they do need to harness and unleash that empathy. Healthcare
workers are 'naturals,' so healthcare organizations should not just
perform on par with other industries like hospitality, but surpass
them and become models for customer service."

Healthcare Providers Can Become Empathy Engines by Harnessing
Employees' Natural Talent and Tapping the "Informal Organization"

According to the report, healthcare organizations can transform
themselves into empathy engines by tapping into the "informal
organization," the network of individuals that exists in every
business or institution, outside the formal organization chart. The
informal organization is where most work really gets done and where
most problems are solved.

"The informal organization is central to healthcare - most care is
provided one-on-one, or in small groups, far away from processes and
systems," Ms. Machida says. "Healthcare providers can tap the empathy
and energy that lives in the informal organization. The first step is
to recognize that it exists. The next step is to capitalize on that
energy - listen to employees and empower them to innovate and deliver
quality care on the frontline."

She adds, "We found a group of employees at NYU Medical Center
that organized their own program to create new patient service
standards. They created meetings and a reward system, and exerted peer
pressure - in a nice way - to get other employees involved. Senior
leaders can tap into that energy and enthusiasm by putting aside
formal branding programs and surveys - and instead meet with employees
in informal settings and truly hear what they have to say. At Baptist
Health Care, executives even participate in a 'Work in My Shoes'
program where they swap jobs once a year with frontline workers."

The report also describes the successful experience of The Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation. It launched a Transforming Care at the
Bedside program at 12 hospitals that increased nurses' bedside time
from 30-40 percent to 70 percent by giving them control of their own
units.

Make Sure the Formal Keeps Up With the Informal

"The formal organization of systems and structures plays a key
role," Ms. Entel says. "Once the institution understands what its best
employees are doing on the frontline - their innovations and
contributions - it's the task of the formal organization to put
systems in place, such as recognition and training programs, that
reinforce empathetic service and achieve large-scale impact."

"By managing empathy as a capability - measuring it and promoting
it through hiring, role design and promotion - the formal organization
can make sure that empathy takes root," Ms. Machida says. "For
example, in developing recruiting strategies, the formal organization
can play a key role by recognizing - and acting on the insight - that
many people learn empathy in customer service settings outside of
healthcare. A formal program to recruit from the retail or hospitality
industry can help capture that empathy and ensure that empathy becomes
part of the organizational DNA."

The report describes how The Mayo Clinic put a system in place
that asked candidates for frontline positions to tell a story about
when they were truly empathetic. That helped identify the best
performers and also signaled that great care is more than just medical
care - it's the capacity to deliver empathetic patient service.

"Empathy is not much talked about in the healthcare reform
debate," says Ms. Entel. "But it's the hidden factor that, once you
address it, can transform the healthcare system."

For a copy of the report, "The Empathy Engine: Achieving
Breakthroughs in Patient Service," or to schedule an interview with
Ms. Entel or Ms. Machida, contact Alexandra Corriveau of Sommerfield
Communications at (212) 255-8386 or alexandra@sommerfield.com.

About Katzenbach Partners

Katzenbach Partners LLC works with leading global companies to
achieve breakthroughs in organizational performance. The firm applies
new thinking about how organizations work, serving companies across
industries to shape strategy, improve operations and effect change.
Katzenbach Partners is building a different kind of consulting firm,
one that integrates strategic problem solving with pragmatic insight
into people and organizations. http://www.katzenbach.com.

Sommerfield Communications, Inc.
Alexandra Corriveau, 212-255-8386
alexandra@sommerfield.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008