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IU Health, competitors turn focus to improving experience for patients, families
When Karen Cernock worked in the hotel industry, she learned the 10-5 rule. When a customer is 10 feet away, make eye contact and smile. When the customer is 5 feet away, say hello and offer to help.
There were other rules, too.
"You didn't walk through a hallway looking at your cell phone," she said. "You were paying attention to the customer who was trying to figure out where to go. You would walk over to help a couple staring into space, trying to figure out which elevator to take."
These days, after more than a decade working as a manager for Hyatt Regency, Drury Inn & Suites and other hotel companies, Cernock has a new assignment: Bring those hospitality skills to Indiana University Health, the state's largest hospital system.
As IU Health's experience design capability manager, she advises workers on everything from bed linens and cleaning services to room-service meals and the entire "arrival experience." Her mission is to create a common hospitality brand across all 14 IU Health hospitals, so the patient experience is similar across the system.
It's part of IU Health's new push to be more consistent, and not leave the patient guessing where to go or what's going on.
"Consumerism has come into health care," said Cernock, 39, who started her new job last summer. "People have more choices where they can get care. We want to make the patient experience better."
Around Indiana, hospitals are doubling down on the lofty goal of patient satisfaction. Some, like IU Health, are hiring managers to oversee various aspects of the patient experience, from registration to discharge.
Others are breaking down boundaries between departments to make sure all workers learn the drill, without needing to reach outside to the hotel industry. And at some hospitals, top executives are leading new-employee orientation sessions, with heavy emphasis on making patients and their families feel welcome and helped, with just as much emphasis on compassion as medical care.
There are good business reasons for the new emphasis.
In 2009, the federal Medicare program began requiring hospitals to report patient satisfaction scores so it could publish them on the website hospitalcompare.hhs.gov. The website allows...