Hospitals gear up to promote customer satisfaction
Debbie A. Lubis, Contributor, Jakarta
Patients want to be satisfied with the quality of care they receive from a hospital. Their interactions with staff members at the hospital will determine whether they will choose the same hospital again or recommend it to others. Therefore, hospitals do their best to tailor their services to the needs of patients as customers.
Dr. Jusuf Kristianto, a health care quality improvement consultant, said hospitals could improve their services if they standardized medical workers' competence and standardized operating procedures in handling patients.
"Malpractice happens because of the failure to comply with the rules and regulations. Doctors and nurses cannot jump to the physical examination stage without doing the preliminary stages."
Jusuf, who is also a lecturer in the postgraduate program at the School of Public Health at the University of Indonesia, said customer satisfaction was included on the curriculum at school for nurses and midwives.
He said there were five dimensions that must receive proper attention from hospitals: the hospitals' physical appearance, the hospitals' competence, career development of medical workers, faith and empathy.
Jusuf has monitored customer satisfaction at three big hospitals in Jakarta. One has achieved 96 percent customer satisfaction, while on average hospitals in big cities in Indonesia are still at the level of 75 percent.
"Hospitals are part of the service industry, which is related or has direct contact with customers. Although the doctors are very smart, if they cannot maintain service quality the patients will run away."
Service quality will help hospitals achieve high efficiency and efficacy, especially in encouraging word-of-mouth promotion.
"Hospitals now realize it is not just the patients who need them. Because without patients, hospitals would die financially and academically," said Samsuridjal Djauzi, a professor at the School of Medicine at the University of Indonesia and the president director of the Dharmais National Cancer Hospital.
Several hospitals in Indonesia now provide dormitories for patients' families and use banks for their billing administration. Patients in the waiting room at Dharmais are entitled to receive free drinks and snacks. The hospital also provides newspapers, a shoe-polish service and an Internet center. There is also a pick-up service to and from the airport for patients from other regions in Indonesia and from abroad. It also provides social workers to accompany patients who need company during their stay.
Dr. Pramadhya Bachtiar, a medical services expert at PT Pertamina Bina Medika Pertamedika, said doctors and other medical workers needed to give time to patients to communicate their problems.
"Hospital staff sometimes consider themselves as higher than the patients. Patients are also human beings. A doctor, for example, cannot receive five patients at the same time in one room because there is no privacy and confidentiality for them to share their problems."
Proper attention should also be given to the patients who have returned home after being hospitalized. Pramadhya said that hospitals could send health care workers to visit such patients and try to help the family provide appropriate home care.
"We need to provide holistic, humanized and individual treatment for patients. A smile can be a good start."
Sufficient information should also be given to patients. According to Hasbullah Thabrany, a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Indonesia, patients have the right to know about their illness, its risks, alternative treatments and side effects.
Pharmacists should also be helpful by making sure that patients receive sufficient information about the drugs prescribed by doctors.
Hasbullah emphasized the need for giving empathy to patients. "Caring requires more than just prescribing medicine. Through body language and soothing words, doctors can help alleviate the patients' pain."