"Designer" Hospitals

Don't be fooled...hospitals are "competing" for your business.
They want YOU to come to THEM and spend your money (well your insurer's pay-outs more specifically) with THEM and not the competitor.

In an effort to do this, there are many marketing strategies - a hospital that wants to be successful strives to become a "system"; it's gone way beyond the brick and mortar building itself and it extends into many different venues in our community.

In one of the latest trends we see these "Boutique" Hospitals (BH) springing up, or old ones getting "Contempo" facelifts. These BH are adorn with the latest in aesthetically pleasing exterior facades, window designs, landscaped (er sculpted) grounds and picturesque exterior night time illumination (ala' Cideralla's Castle lit up at night at Disney World)....

You enter them and you will feel the "ebb and flow" and the feng shui and the healing air that permeates. The "energy" is filtered, your endorphins are calmed, free-radicals are held at bay...heck, you probably don't need as much pain medicine post-op!

The palm trees, the bonsai trees, the falling water wall, the light airy music fills the hall.
The colors; earthy hues of subtle color tones, dark and quiet - greens, blues, grays; you might even feel so at peace you wonder why you came to this BH in the first place.

Now don't get me wrong, I appreciate a calm, quiet, soothing environment as much as the next person; but the extent to which the BH is going these days seems a little overboard to me. The personalized, individualized and engaging care by the clinical and non-clinical care team is great; maybe even just a little too much for my tastes - I'm a big boy, when I need something, I know how to ask....

So we went to one of these BH this am for the wife'ys thyroid surgery first I noticed a near-empty parking lot! It was nice to be able to park up front and close, but for a minute I thought we were too early and maybe they hadn't opened up yet. Later as I left for errands and drove around the campus, I notice that strategically all the staff and MD's were relegated to parking in the back and out of sight. So for this first impression it was good but again as I said, it looked DEAD (bad choice of words for a hospital) this AM.

Ah, then we come to the foyer to healing... through double glass doors (frameless mind you - so it looks like the doors are merely windows to the outside world) Uh memo to local bird flocks, look out for the doors! Then immediately you are met by a "personal representative" who it seems was expecting us. She takes us by the hand pretty much and leads us to a business clerk who gives a smile and a nod and dispatches us with the escort to the next step. She leads us through the garden er, uh "hallway" of healing all the while giving a running monologue like a tour guide of the amenities and points of interest (just not as funny or slapstick like the 20 somethings who are the "tour guides" on the Disney Jungle Cruise ride...).

So our personal escort ends when we are introduced to the matron who is the "overseer" uh I mean "hostess" over the surgery waiting area. And she too takes her personal interest in us and "guides" us to a quiet corner of the waiting area to await being called back; oh and don't forget the electric-pager-coaster-blinking-thing to let us know when our table is ready, I mean our pre-op room. "Will that be smoking or non tonight?"....

And thus it went, this very personal attention was nice - but again for me a little too much maybe. Im a point-me-in-the-right-direction kind of guy and I'll find my way; but nice nonetheless.

So back to our original point here - we start to see the dramatic lengths hospitals are going to in order to get customers. Yeah we USED to call them patients, but realistically now they ARE CUSTOMERS and you know the "customer is always right".

Personally I have seen these efforts from the inside and out and the strategies/philosophies come wrapped in different missions/mantras: "A healing environment", "An atmosphere of high quality service" etc.... Which is all fine and good, but let's look at some bigger issues:

1) In my observation, one of the LARGEST revenue sources for a hospital is it's elective surgery operations; STRATEGY: Build a nice, new, fancy hospital to have your surgery at. Have some fancy/schmancy gizmos, monitors, equipment and methods so you can have the "latest and greatest" - I mean c'mon, who wouldn't? Latest and greatest must be BETTER for me eh?

2) Again, in my observation, one of the LARGEST expenses for a hospital is it's payroll. So how do they manage this to their economic benefit? Well you do MORE with LESS which either means less staff or lesser-paid staff. How's that for the satisfaction of the employees? Think they are feeling the "healing winds" in the same hospital? Have you checked out the decor in the nurses station and lounge compared to that of the patient rooms?

3) In business they say "first impressions" make "lasting impressions" or something like that. So we see these fancy, picturesque, landscaped buildings that look like hotels popping up. To compete you have to be bigger, taller, do it faster and better - and LOOK GOOD while doing it! YOu sit back and look at these BH and wonder about the millions and millions of dollars financed towards construction or remodeling and think "didn't they teach us that prevention is more cost effective than treatment?" Shouldn't we be building more "prevention centers" instead of treatment centers?

You can see where this is going.
I'm not overtly upset with how hospitals and health care is changing, but I am watching with a leery eye. One part of me sees these BH concepts abounding and then wonders are we still taking care of the employees as much as we are taking care of the buildings.....

When I think back to the recent speeches and political diatribe about the economic crisis and how parts of it were based on irresponsible consumer spending as well as irresponsible behavior by creditors - I wonder does this parallel our health care crisis and irresponsible spending by hospital corporations as well?

-KMG 365, Clear