Bringing Hospitality into Healthcare
Recently, I read an article in one of the industry trade magazines about a hospital in Michigan that had hired a manager from the Ritz Carleton Hotel chain. The article was touting the introduction of hotel-like amenities in hospitals — things like providing concierge service, valet parking, room service food ordering, lotions and shampoo, etc.
Healthcare can actually learn a lot from other service industries, such as hospitality, restaurant, and retail. And, in fact, it is. This trend toward providing hotel-like amenities has been happening for the past 5-10 years. The good news is that while some of these amenities were once only reserved for VIP patients, many hospitals are starting to offer extra services to all patients.
I think this is great, yet, I get uncomfortable when people start taking about designing hospitals to look like hotels. Sometimes called “hospitality healthcare design,” there are elements of hotel design that are appropriate for healthcare lobbies and even patient units. But people go to hospitals for very different reasons than they go to hotels. A hospital still has to perform certain functions, many of which involve treatments that require sterile or clean environments or highly technical equipment. Making the healthcare environment as stress-free and safe as possible should be the goal, not to make it look like a hotel.
Service, on the other hand, is different. There is no reason why hospital workers can’t provide the same level of service as hospitality, restaurant, and retail workers are taught to do. In fact, as healthcare becomes more consumer oriented, I think service will become more and more of a factor in making choices.
Leonard Berry, one of CHD’s board directors, and a marketing professor at Texas A&M, has written numerous articles on the service aspect of healthcare. Dr. Berry, who is considered to be one of the “service marketing gurus” in America, spent most of his career studying other service industries (airlines, restaurants, retail, banking), but became interested in healthcare several years ago after spending six months doing field work at the Mayo Clinic. If you’re interested in this subject, I strongly recommend that you read some of his articles.