Dive Brief:
- With budget cuts, consolidations and mergers becoming common in hospitals, facilities that want to drive growth need to get "back to basics" and focus on capacity, efficiency, and service, according to a Becker's Hospital Review article.
- For example, to evaluate whether a proposed new service should be pursued, hospital leaders need to consider whether patients and family can access it and if the facility can commit the needed resources to that service.
- Facilities must also create an efficient and streamlined process for doctors and patients, one which will make patients confident they chose the right facility for treatment. This means they must feel they had the best outcome in safety, quality, security, respect and dignity, Becker's reports.
Dive Insight:
Increasingly, attracting and holding the loyalty of patients requires virtues more common to the retail trade, both in how things look and how attentive service is. Of course, none of this can happen if the hospital isn't delivering good medical service or doesn't manage capacity well. Still, I submit that a "retail" approach to making patients comfortable is one of the new "basics" hospital leaders must address if they want to deliver in such a chaotic environment as today.