Healthcare is a part of service
industry and shoulders an important social objective, i.e. keeping the citizens
of the nation healthy and productive. Service industry is characterized by an
intensive use of human beings are part of value creation and in the healthcare
environment, doctors, nurses, technicians, pharmacists etc. work together as a
team to deliver the experience of care to the patients. That is why hospitals
are seen doing a great service to the community.
In the journey of quality
improvement, it is always essential to keep learning and making slow yet steady
progress on making our services client-centered. This has far more significance
in healthcare than probably in another industry because of the very nature of
the goal that the industry serves. It is in this context that the idea in this
post finds relevance.
Community-Hospital interactions
can be a place for a hospital’s patients to interact with the management in a
constructive dialogue to improve the services of the hospital as well as
provide creative ideas for fixing some of the regular problems facing the
hospital and its patients. Unlike other businesses, patients feel a sense of
connection to their physicians and the hospitals which they visit. Healthcare facilities
are part of the lives of the community-members around it. How many times you
would have come across mothers saying both their children were born in your
hospital, or patients saying that they had surgery in your hospital last year,
or visitors saying they prefer consulting with one of your doctors over other
doctors in the city? There are many such instances where you will find patients
expressing sense of ownership to the hospital.
A community-hospital, organized
once a quarter, is an ideal platform for the management to listen to the needs
of the community and also seek feedback from the patients about the plans of
the hospital. A gap of 3 months will give management enough time to fix some of
the issues raised by the patients in the last interaction and they can respond
to them with the status of progress in the next interaction.
It’s interesting to note that
when we become a public-listed company, because of regulations we conduct the
AGMs and shareholder meets. But as part of a community of ‘stakeholders’, shouldn’t
hospitals feel the same need to have a dialogue with its stakeholders, i.e.
patients?
I could not agree more and that is why i had suggested the quarterly "Rapid-fire" round at FEHI where both the hospital and the patients come together on a common platform and discuss issues.
ReplyDeleteWhich i had already discussed in my earlier comment in one of the other posts.