I really love this time of year. The lull that we have around the holidays gives me the chance to reflect on the previous year and set my sights on the great opportunities that lie in the year ahead. Plus, there’s something so refreshing about having a whole year spread out before me with nothing but possibilities! January is a time for setting goals for myself and for my business. It gives me direction and helps me stay aligned with my mission and vision (I have a personal mission and vision as well as for my business.). Read more...
I had an interesting revelation recently that I wanted to share. In my consulting work, I am frequently asked to help clients understand the patient experience behind the HCAHPS scores. One area that many organizations struggle with is cleanliness. When the cleanliness score goes down, all eyes are on housekeeping, right? Conventional wisdom suggests that, if the scores are bad, it must mean an environmental service is doing a poor job. Well, before you start harping on the housekeeping crew, you might want to take a closer look around and make sure you understand how the patient defines cleanliness. Next, you’ll want to examine some habits that are giving you a bad rap. Read more...
Remember the scene from the movie A Few Good Men when Jack Nicholson’s character shouted from the witness stand, “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”? I often feel like shouting that myself. There are so many times I face off with leaders who want us to come in, wave the magic wand, and fix their patient satisfaction scores rather than facing the truth about the underlying culture that is at the root of poor patient satisfaction. Read more...
What goes up must come down, right? This indisputable law has been regarded as a hard, fast fact for hundreds of years, but it doesn’t have to apply to your patient satisfaction scores. Just because your scores go up, doesn’t mean they have to fall again. And on the flip side, just because they go up, doesn’t mean they’ll stay up.
I was recently chatting with a client about what it takes to sustain positive change and I was shocked to realize how many leaders assume that positive changes aren’t sustainable. Read more...
None of us wants to believe that we are the roadblocks to innovation and change, yet there are so many times when I hear leaders shoot down opportunities for growth and innovation with one simple sentence. Take your pick of these most common squelchers, including: Read more...
- It won’t work!
- We tried that once back in…
- They won’t approve. (The we/they thing is always a clue to filter.)
- That will never fly here!
- You don’t understand. We’re different. (Healthcare suffers from terminal uniqueness, including one doctor’s patients being sicker than all others, one hospital having unique issues with running 24/7, and—my personal favorite—only angry patients fill out satisfaction surveys.)
I love this time of year when fall is tiptoeing onto the landscape and the lazy days of summer surrender to a routine. I live next door to an elementary school and watched this morning as the kids arrived for the first day of school. As I watched the children arrive, I noticed how differently they approached the changes brought about by their first day of school. I began to notice that they fell into one of three categories. The first group seized the day with all the fervor that they could muster. They literally skipped into the school ready to grab the challenges that lay before them. The second group walked slowly and cautiously showing signs of uncertainty but not fully resisting. They would need to size things up before deciding if this was going to be good or not. The third group clearly wanted no part of it. These were the kids who had to be prodded and cajoled if not dragged into the building kicking and screaming. Read more...
