Apollo Hospital Case Study

Case 2 – Apollo Hospital

Justin Boyd

Hospitality should be at the top of the list when it comes to importance for hospitals. Obviously, any hospital should strive to provide the latest and greatest in medical care and treatments for its patients, but it’s important for hospitals to remember that each patient is there due to an unfortunate event or circumstance. Under these unfortunate circumstances, the patient is likely to be very irritable in the first place. When something goes wrong in their care process it is very likely that it will upset the patient and lead to a complaint. Since complaints are looked at as defects, hospitality must be on the forefront of importance in the hospital’s operations.

        By setting a target sigma level for hospitality, Apollo can have a threshold on which to compare its results to. Without a set goal, there is no plan. By quantifying the feedback results, Apollo can categorize complaints. Once categorized Apollo can use the frequency count to have a benchmark for data collection and observation. The frequency count enables us to apply the six-sigma method to ensure these complaints almost never occur.

Using the Kano Evaluation Table, managers can get visibility into different products or services by dividing them into categories of importance to the customer (in this case, a patient). These categories are threshold quality, performance quality and exciting quality. Threshold represents services that go unnoticed by the patient unless the services were not provided, then the patient would complain. Performance quality is expected by the patient because the hospital stated it would provide or the patient has observed this behavior before. Exciting quality is providing services that go beyond the patients’ expectations. The presence of this would delight the patient. An example of this would be providing flowers and a get-well card to the patient. It isn’t expected but the patient would certainly appreciate the kind gesture made by the hospital.

Apollo should focus most efforts on their housekeeping and food & beverage departments. We can see in the word frequency count table that these are major areas if complaints from the patients. The first step to eliminate complaints in these areas is to hire quality control managers. These managers are specific to each department and are masters of their trade. Using their knowledge, Apollo can for a framework for how the operations should flow in each respective department. Once the framework is in place, they can start analyzing results, running random audits for cleanliness and food quality. These quality audits will help ensure employees are staying on top of their game. Management in these departments should also practice great customer service with their patient-facing employees. It is very important that the employs are well equipped with great customer service skills to help solve small issues during the normal course of operations so that a complaint does not arise.

Patient complained about their door not locking properly. Maintenance came to fix the door in matter of 25 minutes, but they didn’t stop there. Management teamed up with facilities to check all doors and repair where needed to ensure that such complaints were not repeated.

The word frequency count was a method used by the team in an attempt to develop strategies that would enable a better patient experience. They were trying to analyze customer complaints and figure out a way to solve the complaint going forward. The word frequency count was taking each complaint and counting each instance of each significant word. For example, the word “time” was the most common. Then, “late” was the twenty-fourth most common. Using the word frequency count method, the team was able to identify a major issue with the response time for various services.