Your hospital needs patients. Not only to survive as a business, but to fulfill your mission. To keep patients coming back and to inspire positive word-of-mouth, your facility needs to demonstrate brilliant customer service skills to impress patients and excite your community.
Always knowing where your hospital stands in terms of patient satisfaction – and making sure your staff does as well – is an important first step in creating awareness amongst your team members. If your scores aren’t in the 90 percentile and/or are trending downward, then it’s time to look at making a change.
There are many reasons a hospital should opt for an ongoing customer service training program.
Your reimbursements depend on it!
As you are well aware by now, Medicare reimbursements are based on care quality, not just the services your hospital provides. If your team delivers poor customer service and that experience is reflected on the patients’ HCAHPS surveys, your hospital could stand to lose tens of thousands of dollars (or even millions depending on your facility) in reimbursements. Just think about that. What a poor way to lose out on critical funding.
Your patients expect a certain level of care to begin with.
When I’m sick and hospitalized, the last thing I want is to deal with is a rude nurse, careless receptionist, or arrogant physician. Patients expect for their experience to easy and calm. So why would you want someone else to put up with a subpar experience?
Your community will talk about their experience.
Negative personal experiences can undo years of positive brand equity your facility has earned. If one patient has a bad experience at your facility, their family and friends will hear about it. Do not let word-of-mouth ruin your hospital’s reputation.
Happy employees make happy patients.
Have you ever walked into a store or business and noticed that the workers clearly hate their job? Not a good impression of that person nor the business, huh?
Don’t let poor attitudes trickle down to poor customer service. It affects your patients and internal morale. High employee satisfaction will often coincide with positive patient satisfaction. Spread the love.
If you don’t, others will.
If your facility cannot provide patients with a great experience, another hospital will. Outstanding customer service offers a way to differentiate your hospital from others in the region. Rural hospitals already have a challenge to keep patients local, so don’t let patient satisfaction be a reason why they travel to competitors.
An ongoing customer service training program doesn’t have to be expensive to work. In fact, it should be seen as an investment to potentially save your facility tens of thousands (if not millions) of dollars in reimbursements.
If you would like to learn how affordable customer service training and leadership development programs can be for your hospital, please give SRJ a call at 214-528-5775.
