More than money back: a true commitment to service

Knowing that I am a hospital administrator, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that this headline--$80,000 in refunds: What Geisinger has learned from its money-back guarantee immediately caught my attention. When it popped up in my inbox on Monday, and I clicked right through to read the corresponding article. The article details Geisinger Health System CEO David Feinberg’s newly implemented plan of offering money-back guarantees to dissatisfied patients. 

After reading the piece, I applaud Geisinger’s (and Feinberg’s) renewed emphasis on providing quality service and a positive patient experience. I think focusing on the experience the patient and the family receive is incredibly important in any health care delivery system. Yet, I can’t help find the offer of “money-back guarantee” more of a gimmick than a program to improve quality.

Health care organizations should be focused on providing the best possible service and patient experience today and every day, and should not be motivated by the threat of having to return money. The drive for quality should be systemic and thoughtful - not punitive in nature. Sure, you can return a patient’s money if they do not feel like they got the level of care they deserved, but in the process, are you improving the quality you provide? If not, then what’s really the point?

At Jupiter Medical Center we review feedback in a variety of contexts. For example, we have a monthly patient focus group where we meet with a group of engaged former patients who provide us great information related to the experience they received at the medical center. In addition, we utilize some traditional quality measuring tools including HCAHPS—an extremely effective platform to measure patient satisfaction. More importantly, we have systems in place to ensure that our culture is focused completely on the experience of our patients, families, physicians and team members throughout our total system of care. 

Personally, I believe that if you want to achieve world-class service, you need to focus on creating a positive service culture. You need to think through the elements of what supports and fosters being able to deliver that world-class service from bottom to top and focus on every touch point in between. At our medical center we require all team members to go through a three-day course called “Reigniting the Spirit of Caring” which is built on the Relationship-Based Care (RBC) model. Relationship-Based Care is completely focused on creating a nurturing environment that starts with team members supporting each other. The goal is that the connection translates into the patient experience.

A culture of delivering world-class service, in my opinion, is not built on programs, initiatives or gimmicks. It is built on a solid cultural foundation that becomes part of the DNA of the organization and how it operates at every level and at every moment. Programs come and go, but a strong culture focused on supporting each other and our customers can last a lifetime.

Health Care Technology 2.0

The proliferation of technology in health care is everywhere. It is beginning to change the way patients are cared for, how physicians engage the health care consumer, how research is conducted, and finally, how patients are being turned into health care activists and taking control of their personal health. This transformation is necessary in order for the industry to control cost and improve quality. We need to create a highly reliable system of care, and we can only do this by leveraging technology. 

From the explosion of the iPhone and Apple’s Health app to the widespread popularity of Fitbit, access to a significant amount of one’s own personal health data, is at our fingertips. There will come a time—much sooner than later—when patients will walk into their doctors’ offices with their personal mobile devices armed with more information about their body chemistry and function than their doctor has on hand. The real question and what we must then try to navigate, is how will this information be used by the health care provider. If the information the consumer is accumulating is not being used to manage their health in a proactive way, then why collect the information? Will this collection of data and access to significant health information drive patients to advocate and even demand, more testing or interventionist exploration than is necessary?  

Finally, a lot has been written lately about the security of mobile app data; however, I am confident the industry will continue adapting and innovating to address these issues. IT companies have developed all sorts of systems and applications to protect and ensure the security of patient health information. The reality is that when we operated with paper records, we probably had a less secure environment related to access and protection of patient information. 

Course of Treatment

At Jupiter Medical Center, I lead a team of more than 1,600 dedicated professionals and 600 physicians all focused on one goal: to deliver world-class, affordable health care to our community in South Florida. And we are succeeding.

For the last six years, we have worked to reimagine the way we deliver health care to our community - evolving from a model of hospital-centric services to a modern, patient-centric system of care where we provide services all along the continuum of patient need. Today, we are able to deliver an increased intensity of inpatient medical care, an expanded spectrum of ambulatory care and vital post acute care, offering a complete continuum of health and wellness services to our community of both the highest quality and outstanding value for the health care consumer.

This transformation did not happen overnight. It required us to take thoughtful action to transform the way we do business. We worked with our community of patients and providers to ascertain the needs in our community and then expanded our portfolio of programs and services accordingly. We deployed new technologies both to advance and expand the caliber of the health care we provide as well as to streamline the back-end of our business to improve efficiency and communication. We developed strategic affiliations and dynamic partnerships with some of the nation’s leading hospitals and health care providers, enabling us again to increase the scope and depth of our services. Finally, we created physician alignments in the form of multi-specialty groups, engaging local doctors in meaningful and transparent ways.

While we have been successful thus far, there are changes in health care, in the market place and frankly, in the world that affect our business every day. In order to maintain our trajectory and continue to build our business and provide world-class health care, we must remain nimble and adaptable. We must understand the environment in which we operate, and learn from those in our business who are also doing great work. We must be open to learning, listening and communicating.

That is why I want to start sharing my thoughts on both the work we are doing here at Jupiter Medical Center and in the evolving global world of health care. I realize there is a lot of misinformation and noise out there in regards to what we, as health care providers, are striving to accomplish. This blog is designed to be a thoughtful dialogue on what is happening in the health care sector and how we can all contribute to improving care and outcomes. I want to engage with both health care consumers and partners to create a thoughtful balanced conversation, entertaining all points of view. I hope you will both follow and engage with me - entering into a constructive conversation on the work we do. I look forward to talking with you.