Can Hospitality Cure the Woes of Healthcare?

Have you ever wondered about the similarity between “hospital” and “hospitality”? Is this a coincidence, or can we identify how they’re connected? Maybe we can also discover how hospitality concepts could help repair the broken relationship between the healthcare system and its patients.

Healthcare revolves around the delivery of patient care. Thus, customer service and satisfaction must play a role in its success. After all, if our patients are unhappy, don’t feel appreciated, and have a sense that their presence barely matters, they could stop showing up, and we’d all wind up unemployed as our nation’s health suffered. Who wants to see that happen?

Back to the Roots

Sources at Harvard University identified that the Latin hostis and hospes are related to the concept of the guest. At the same time, other sources also cite Latin terms such as hospitalis and hospitem as related to the modern terms guest and host.

In this case, it’s worthwhile wondering why, if our name for the modern-day hospital stems from such roots, have we strayed so far from customer service and hospitality in how we treat healthcare consumers?

Hospitality Matters

“Can you think of any healthcare experience you’ve had that’s gone wrong? According to our research, most adults can. It’s interesting to note the culprit is rarely the clinical outcome. Rather, it’s generally how the care was delivered”, states Peter Yesawich, PhD, a consultant and veteran of both the healthcare and hospitality industries. Yesawich is also co-author of “Hospitable Healthcare: Just What the Patient Ordered!” a remarkably insightful review of how principles of hospitality can improve the patient experience.

Yesawich and his co-author, Stowe Shoemaker, PhD, ask, “How can that experience be improved?” According to the authors, the hospitality industry has increasingly gotten things right while the healthcare system falters at the starting gate.

When considering how to make healthcare more hospitable, Yesawich remarks, “Many people in healthcare default to the notion that it’s just about making staff smile, but that’s not the idea. Smiling and a positive attitude can certainly be beneficial, but it’s more about the way providers anticipate and address patients’ anxieties, needs, and preferences.”

The PAEER Model

According to Yesawich and Shoemaker, their five-part model for more hospitable healthcare is broken down into an acronym from their extensive research: the PAEER model (Prepare, Anticipate, Engage, Evaluate, Reward). The authors offer specific actions practitioners can take to enhance the patient experience.

Prepare: Healthcare facilities can welcome patients by better understanding their needs and preferences. (Hospitality industry providers do this through “Customer Relationship Management” (CRM) programs that record, track, and analyze guest behavior.)

Anticipate: Once patients’ preferences and needs are more clearly understood, we can avoid what decreases patient satisfaction, which, according to the authors’ research, includes the unwelcoming nature of the check-in experience, repeated requests for the same information, ease of access to making appointments and, most importantly, not knowing the estimated cost of care in advance.

“When you take your car to the garage for repair, book a hotel room or table at a restaurant, you know the estimated cost of that service in advance,” Yesawich states. “Why don’t healthcare providers also give a pro forma estimate of the cost of the service they are about to deliver in advance, naturally with an appropriate disclaimer, especially given that they know what they are likely to charge based on negotiated reimbursement rates?”

Engage: “Yesawich states, “Hospitality industry professionals refer to the points of actual service delivery as ‘moments of truth’, the specific interactions that ultimately determine the customer experience.”

He continues, “They have developed a number of techniques to ensure these ‘moments’ yield a positive reaction, including the introduction and use of acronyms that reflect their commitment to enhancing guest satisfaction that is easy for staff to remember and recite; the introduction of service standards that reinforce the connection with their mission/vision/values (behaviors repeated over and over define the culture of your organization), and providing invoices/bills for the services they deliver that are easy to understand.”

Yesawich makes one additional point: “Many also offer performance guarantees that underscore the confidence they have in the delivery of services for which the outcome is generally predictable (e.g., clinic wait times, turnaround times for test results, prompt resolution of billing disputes, etc.)”

Evaluate: “I marvel at the fact that many healthcare providers don’t follow up with patients after an appointment to see how things went,” Yesawich shares. While this is becoming more commonplace, there’s often a pervasive feeling that providers don’t care about receiving patient feedback.

Reward: While the authors acknowledge that the law prohibits financial incentives for patients with government insurance, there are no restrictions in using recognition and reward programs to attract patients with commercial insurance.

Yesawich adds, “These could include ‘rewards’ that enhance the future health and well-being of patients. Examples include free health screenings, invitations to attend free lectures by providers or nurses on timely health topics, free admission to cooking and fitness classes, etc.”

What Can You Do?

For staff nurses without the authority to change how an organization operates, Yesawich maintains that there are still plenty of ways to introduce principles of hospitality. He counsels the first step in the process is understanding the root cause of most patient dissatisfaction: how the care is delivered.

“You can get management to recognize that most of the dissatisfaction patients have with healthcare has to do with the manner in which the care is delivered, not the clinical outcome, the author states. “Implementing specific principles of hospitality along the patient journey can positively impact the patient experience, even when the clinical outcome is unsatisfactory.”