Need:

Saint Thomas Hospital was an organization doing a number of things right, garnering national recognition for excellence and high patient satisfaction scores. But they also identified an area for improvement: Staff needed better human interaction skills in order to treat patients—and each other—even better. Says director of guest services, Robin Crowell, “We needed to be proactive and do something to improve. The cost of not doing something could be loss of patients or revenue. We can’t afford not to do it!”

Solution:

In partnership with DDI, Saint Thomas Hospital rolled out Service Plus® for Health Care, and set out to train over 700 associates to deliver top quality people skills. Organization wide, leaders and staff looked for ways to meet personal and practical needs to provide excellent service. And after training, Service Boosters helped reinforce good patient service skills and ingrain them in Saint Thomas’ culture.

Results:

Since 2006, Saint Thomas has earned some impressive results:

• Employee engagement measured in the 68th percentile in October of 2006. In April of 2008, engagement showed a huge improvement, moving to the 75th percentile.
• HCAHPS results improved from the 90th to the 96th percentile for rating the hospital. The number of patients recommending the hospital also improved, from the 94th to 95th percentile in a one-year period.
• Saint Thomas’ hard-to-move Net Promoter Score improved a point, from 73.74 to 74.7.
• Anecdotally, service excellence training is impacting not only patient interactions, but internal ones, too— leading to improved engagement and reduced turnover.