Hospitals need reputation management

Rudijanto, Contributor, Jakarta

An email sent to a cyber mailing list in the third week of October warning all mailing list members about the poor coordination at a Greater Jakarta-based hospital could have a more damaging impact on the hospital's reputation once it is published in print media.

The email sender claims to be the father of a 17-month-old baby who was being treated in the hospital for high fever that had reached 41 degrees C. The email states that on the third day of treatment, the baby almost received antibiotic injections twice in a time span of merely 30 minutes, while normally the antibiotic injections should have a time span of eight hours.

"I rejected the second antibiotic injection and asked the nurse to recheck it. But the nurse left the room and never returned again. This only proves that she had committed a mistake because she was not supposed to inject the antibiotics for a second time in a span of 30 minutes," wrote the email sender.

The email sender said he could not imagine the harmful impact on the condition of his baby had she received the second antibiotic injection just 30 minutes after the first injection of the same drug.

Though not published in any print media, such emails to group members can certainly create a negative reputation for a hospital, at least, in the eyes of mailing list members and all the people they speak with on a normal basis in one of the well- circulated mailing lists in the Indonesian cyber world.

If one mailing list member spreads the news to an average of two friends and, in turn, these two friends tell their other two friends, then such mouth-to-mouth news about that hospital can spread among a really significant number of people.

Indeed any news about malpractice carried out by medical doctors and hospital staff has a tendency to spread faster and stay longer in people's memory than one can imagine. Both print and electronic media too are quick to cover any malpractice cases at hospitals.

In addition, letters to the editor section in newspapers and magazines often publish complaints against hospitals and doctors. Thus, one often hears people quote a long misleading perception about the media, namely any bad news is newsworthy for the media.

But that misleading perception about the media is not true as the media also provides space for good news involving medical staff and hospitals. Nationwide media groups, such as Kompas and Media Indonesia, often publish great success stories about difficult operations, such as operations to separate conjoined twins by local doctors.

Even provincial media such as Radar Madiun published in mid- October some detailed coverage about the achievements of a medical team of little-known Caruban regional hospital (RSUD Caruban) in conducting a difficult operation to make an anus for two-year old girl Atresia Ani, who was born without an anus.

The newspaper generously wrote that the successful anus installment was a big leap forward for RSUD Caruban as normally, only big hospitals such as Surabaya's RSUP Dr. Soetomo and Yogyakarta's RSU Drs. Sardjito would have had the ability to conduct such anus surgery.

Thus, the problem does not lie in the media, but more on the communications aspect of hospitals in Indonesia so that good news is rarely communicated or exposed in the media. However, the opinion that a single piece of bad news can taint hundreds of good works by hospitals can be true.

Himawan Wijanarko, General Manager of Strategic Services at the Jakarta Consulting Group, admits that hospitals often complain that there is no news about their good services to a thousand people but, when one patient is disappointed, the media will make it big news.

"This negative news often harms hospitals as it tends to create a negative image of the hospital. In the long run, such publication of negative news will create a bad reputation for hospitals in Indonesia," Himawan said.

He believes that the source of this publication of bad news for hospitals is the growing critical attitude among the people towards health services in hospitals. As the media enjoys its long-awaited freedom, this critical attitude finds its outlet in newspaper and magazine pages.

Here, Indonesian hospitals need well-planned and well-carried out public relations (PR) programs to manage their reputations. This PR work has become increasingly significant as present-day hospitals are not just charitable and social institutions just like the ones in the past, but also profit-oriented businesses.

Himawan agrees with the shift in the character of hospitals from social institutions to profit-oriented business, though he stressed that the term "profit-oriented" is often disliked by some people.

"But that is the reality. The environment is really changing and, therefore, the people's expectations are growing high when it comes to hospital services. Certainly, we have to accept the fact that good hospital services require high expenses and investment," he said.

For instance, Siloam Health CareGroup that runs the Siloam Gleneagles Hospital in Lippo Karawaci, Siloam Gleneagles Hospital in Lippo Cikarang, Siloam Graha Medika Hospital in Jakarta and another Siloam Gleneagles Hospital in Surabaya have invested a lot to make a number of quality improvement projects.

Walter Gilmore, CEO of the Siloam HealthCare Group, reveals that the group has invested some Rp 4.5 billion on new medical equipment for the Siloam Hospital in Cikarang. Earlier this year, the group installed the latest CT scanner and MRI equipment at the Siloam Hospital in Lippo Karawaci.

"We are now looking at the possibility of setting up a cancer center here to provide Indonesian cancer patients with care at world-class standards. To set up a high quality, comprehensive care center would cost between US$12 million and US$14 million, most of which would go on medical equipment," Gilmore said.

Siloam HealthCare Group is clearly not a social and charitable foundation taking care of sick people for free. Before deciding to make the investment, the group has certainly made a good calculation on the return on investment and future profit from the money paid by patients.

Siloam HealthCare Group is certainly engaged in a tough competition in attracting patients with other big hospitals in Greater Jakarta area and even with overseas hospitals such the ones in Singapore or Australia.

In this tough competitive environment, reputations certainly become very vital for a hospital's continued operation. That is why Himawan stresses that, aside from improving their quality, hospitals have to professionally manage their reputations.

"Hospital management groups in Indonesia often have good intentions to boost their service quality but they often forget to properly manage their clients' perception. Without good perception management, the reputation of hospitals in Indonesia is at stake," Himawan added.

To help motivate hospitals, particularly those in Greater Jakarta, to improve their quality of services, Himawan reveals that his company is thinking of carrying out an award program for Greater Jakarta's hospitals some time next year.

"Aside from giving hospitals motivation to boost services, the award program also aims at stimulating good publicity on the positive side of hospitals in Jakarta. By doing so, we hope to create a good balance in media news pertaining to hospitals here," he said.

From a public relations point of view, such awards are always useful as long as they are given by a credible institution, preferably an objective one, and accompanied by good public relations programs. Indeed, amid tough competition with each other, hospitals need to take up the challenge to manage their reputations.