Patient Experience at Eko Hospital

The experience a customer/patient has at a hospital is hinged on the quality of not just the specialist health care service he or she receives but also on the quality of his or her service experience.

In the experience shared below from a customer/patient at Eko Hospital, what was negatively impacted was the quality of his/her service experience and I will break this down in more detail as well as share what Eko and other hospitals in Nigeria can do to make sure they manage their patients' experience properly in line with their wait time to see a consultant.



STORY SHARED
"...I have been looking for an opportunity to vent about my last experience at Eko Hospital, Ikeja. I woke up one morning to meet an early appointment, got their before 8am but left at about 12.30pm without seeing the Consultant. What a waste of time. I wonder how many patients have lost their lives out of this level of carelessness on their part. I rate them 0/5"


My Perspective.
In reviewing this case of a poor service experience, let's start by taking into cognizance why people go to hospitals in the first place so we understand what patient expectations prior to visiting hospitals and in the end understand why this particular customer/patient feels the way he/she does.

People go to hospitals because they want to prevent or cure an illness and to rehabilitate themselves health wise. In other words, they trust that by going to the hospital and seeing a specialist, they will get well or at least improve progressively. So if as a patient [reference to this experience shared], I visit the hospital to prevent or get more information about a medical condition and I have booked an appointed prior to visiting the hospital, my experience should;

1. Visit the  hospital at the time scheduled
2. On arrival confirm identity
3. Meet the consultant 
4. Get information on next steps (if any) 
5. Leave the hospital 

 The below is a pictorial snapshot of this patient's poor service experience.  

Figure 1: Customer Journey Snapshot

Impact of This Experience?

While getting specialist health care is important, when things like this happen, it negatively impacts the reputation of the hospital. Dissatisfied customers will tell others about their experience and there is a high likelihood that patient/customer churn rate at the hospital will be high. Let's look at the comment captured in this feedback "...I wonder how many patients have lost their lives out of this level of carelessness on their part..." Now it goes beyond his/her singular experience to the experience someone in need of medical emergency is likely to have howbeit Eko hospital may have a separate process for ER [emergency room] cases. Overall, this patient/customer has rated Eko Hospital 0 over 5 

What Can Eko Hospital and Other Hospitals Do To Prevent Patient Dissatisfaction

Specific to this case my suggestions will be;

1. Check patient flow rate and average time it takes for a patient to access the front desk and a consultant to get a sense of the average wait time. 
2. Check to see that you have adequate resource attending to patients per time. Now this is a bigger conversation especially when you discover very quickly that you do not have enough medical and paramedical human resource and you cannot accommodate any additional variable costs. You now need to look into how you can restructure your operations in the interest of the patient because in the end, you need patients coming to your hospital and paying up to keep your operations running. Again, this is a bigger and more strategic conversation that needs to happen if cost is a challenge
3. Its important to train your front desk personnel post scheduling patients on appointments on how to prioritize such appointments while also not letting waiting patients feel like they are not important. Maybe consider having a separate waiting area for them depending on how your office is structured?
4. Part of your front process to waiting patients should be communication or engagement around waiting time. In some instances, waiting can not be prevented as no business is perfect but it will be great to have a maximum wait time in place so if patient wait time exceeds that, front desk staff can proactively approach patient, apologize and reschedule based on health conditions? If this was done, probably this overall experience would have been saved because the patient was engaged?

The above are some suggestions on how this experience can be improved going forward but and very importantly, please remember that every business/hospital has its peculiarities and as such there may be other quick wins to addressing patient dissatisfaction with overall wait time to see a consultant.

However, if you choose to address this from a strategic perspective and fix the problem at source [I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THIS APPROACH], before you go about implementing any of the suggestions above;

1. Engage/speak to your patient/customer facing staff. Get their feedback on why this is and what they will suggest can done to fix this challenge and make work easier for them. Remember they are the ones that have to manage customers who are dissatisfied with the wait time to see a consultant, they are your champions!
2. Engage and speak to your existing and maybe churned patients/customers to get their feedback on the issue - you can also use this opportunity to check their experience interacting with all the touch points in your hospital ie kill two birds with one stone
3. Analyze/Review feedback collected from both your team and your customers/patients especially pain points per service touch point and around areas for improvement. Try if you can to map their journey which is look at it from an end to end perspective like in figure 1 to see how these ideas fit into not just your patients experience but also your customer-facing staff experience because they are the ones implementing your experience improvement initiatives so it has to be easy and applicable 
4. You cannot do it all in a day or in a week. If this is your first time doing this, don't rush it! Make a plan, set targets based on your current and aspirational capabilities. Rome was not built in a day so you cannot fix in a day a problem hat may have been lingering for years depending on how long your hospital has been in business  
5. Make it everyone's business to make everyone happy and share patient/customer information with everyone so you all know what needs to be done, where improvements have happened and when to celebrate both your team and your customers

Ever patient is a customer and they expect to not only get specialist heath care but also expect to enjoy the process of getting the care.

For more information about how you can gather feedback from your employees and patients as well as kick start patient experience improvement initiatives in your hospital, please send an email to talktodebbie6@gmail.com 

Have a good one!