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Community Hospital Borrows Show Biz Staging

 |  By Alexandra Wilson Pecci  
   October 05, 2011

When was the last time you saw someone mowing the lawn at Disney World? Or emptying the trash?

It's called the Magic Kingdom for a reason. Someone might be emptying the trash, but somehow it happens behind the scenes. Now, that backstage mentality is entering the healthcare arena.

According to a Detroit Free Press article last month, major hospitals are taking customer service cues from the folks at Disney World in an effort to boost patient satisfaction and get higher Medicare reimbursements when new rules take effect next year.

But it's not just huge hospitals that are getting in on the act. Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center, a community hospital in Lafayette, Louisiana, has just opened a $211 million facility that incorporates Disney's  "onstage and backstage" mentality, says president and CEO W.F. "Bud" Barrow.

"If you come in our hospital, you do not see delivery carts, you do not see patients being transported from one unit to another, you don't see the hustle and bustle of the staff moving to and fro," he tells HealthLeaders. "All you see is a calm healing experience that's more akin to a health resort than a hospital. That's very much the impression that we wanted to leave with folks."

The hospital's central design features two long corridors running north to south. One is the onstage, non-patient care corridor, which houses the chapel, reception area, gift shop, and a guest elevator where visitors will never see a patient on a stretcher. The real business of the hospital takes place in the back corridor, behind the scenes. A security system prevents people from wandering into the patient care area unless they have an access badge.

"That alone segregates the folks here so you have a very quiet and welcoming front and then a very busy and active back," Barrow says. "And never the twain shall meet."

The hospital also features quiet rooms on each floor for family and friends; rooftop courtyards; a family kitchen in the ICU; and a large meditation garden off of the cafeteria. Even the staff locker rooms have "more of a country club feel than they do a hospital feel," Barrow says. "Not that they're elaborate, but that they are peaceful and quiet."

About half of the new facility was financed with the organization's cash reserves; a bond offering brought in the additional $100 million dollars. But according to Barrow, hospitals don't need to start from scratch in order to incorporate Disney-like customer service.

"First ask the question," he says. "How can we make this feel more like a health resort than a hospital?"

For example, increasing the amount of time nurses spend at the bedside is another customer-service improvement initiative that hospitals are undertaking.

To help achieve that, Our Lady of Lourdes has "same-handed rooms." Every room in the hospital looks exactly the alike, with every single supply, monitor, and remote control in the same place.

In addition, every patient bed is on the left, a simple element that Barrow says helps nurses "save their steps."

"By the bed being on the left side of every room, and patients almost universally being examined on their right side, we've saved five or six steps every time a nurse goes into a room because they never have to traverse around the bed," he says. "You can imagine the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of steps that are saved during the course of a year."

Barrow says the new hospital was "designed with you in mind." That means considering what every stakeholder, whether it's an employee, patient, or visitor, would want in a hospital. And although most people wouldn't choose to spend a week in a hospital over a week in Disney World, Disney's customer-centric mentality is certainly one to be admired.

"You go there and you marvel at the quality of the service of its people, the atmosphere, of the joyfulness that exists," Barrow says. "All you see is the reason that you came to Disney World."

Alexandra Wilson Pecci is an editor for HealthLeaders.

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