Health Care: Don’t Make Them Sick While They’re Trying To Get

Well

Tridip Jyoti Borah

Changes ?

Seller’s Market

Buyer’s Market

Health Care in the USA… Then

• There would always be sickness and disease and calamity.

• And the sick and injured would always need hospitals and doctors and nurses.

• And they would always be good little patients and do exactly as they are told.

Now …

• Hospitals and clinics and doctors are relearning

• Hospital Administrators: Three Piece suit, talk bottom line and return on investment. To stay ahead of the competition

• Hospital Administrators talk about marketing strategy and segmentation

• Holding people-skill training programs on the personnel front

• Finding ways to serve patients and make more money alongwith.

Patients as Customers• The difference between quality

of care and quality of caring they receive

• Consumers are willing to pay more for better service

• “Being treated as an individual” is expected more of than “getting better” (Foot Hills Hospital, Calgary)

• “Patients want to be more actively involved in the decision-making process concerning their care and treatment” (Accepted as a growth trend)

What do Patients Judge?

• “Patients have no way to judge on the technical or care-oriented aspects of healthcare but they base their decisions on things they do feel qualified to judge”

Eg: The room, the food, the

admission process, the answers they get to their questions, parking space availability – everything!

Questions ?

• What’s new and What’s next? “Achievement of service quality standards”• What is the new health care consumer looking for? “Patients have opinions about the care they expect

to achieve but not to play doctor or second guess medical practises”

Why Change is Difficult?

• Too many hospitals and Insurance Plans are competing for too few patients.

• USA spends 11% of their GNP on health care (The largest in the world) but the cost of medical services has escalated 7 times faster in the last 5 years.

• The consumer is disappointed in the return on his/her health care dollar.

• Internal problems are rising among the health care providers

• John Naisbitt: 2000 hospitals will have either closed their doors or absorbed into other hospital systems

Responding to the New Consumer

• “Hospitals as Hotels”• Amenities provided howsoever do not decide the fate of

the hospital’s success.• Bottom Line: “The way the patient is treated as a

person”• “Guest Relations” Training: Improving Customer Service• Patients are to be treated as people and not as a case

files and symptoms Eg: The Hemorrhoid in 407• Customer Satisfaction + Customer Complaint Issue =

Customer Retention

Dramatic changes underway in the way medical services are paid for in the USA

Hospitals setting their own price.

1983: Diagnostic

Related Grouping

HMO’s: Catering to 25 Million Americans

• Operates as a sort of Health Care buying club and out-patient clinic run as for-profit business.

• The employees save 30 – 40 % on Health Care benefits.

• They :Take 2nd opinion on surgical proceduresLimit hospital staysPrenegotiate the fees of the Doctors and

hospitals they send toThey basically look after the cost side of

healthcare

Gold in the litter?

Riverside

Methodist

Hospital

Beth Israel Hospital

Focus onCare and

Caring, both the dollars

and the “sense” of

modern medicine

The American Health Care System Shouldn’t Be Made Sick While They’re Trying To Get Well

Indeed.