Clintcast

‘Teaming makes it easier’ is a concept that applies not only to the Care Crowd individuals, but also to organizations as a whole as well. Integration and partnerships are increasingly going to be the norm in healthcare for the foreseeable future as we move into an era where cost-savings, care-consistency, reporting/metrics/etc all become more and more standardized and driven to reward organizations that work together to ultimately drive customer-satisfaction and results. Those left standing on their own with no/few ties to other areas of customer-success will increasingly find their islands become smaller and smaller. Get some tips on how to ensure your organization is ready to ride the coming wave of healthcare!

The first and foremost key to success in healthcare is the realization that it is, after all, a ‘people’ business. As such, if you are not the sort of person that has strong connections to people and strong customer-service orientation, then perhaps healthcare is not the right area for you. Along with this ‘people’ orientation, one needs to be solution-oriented, as the process of being ‘people-oriented’ (especially when constantly providing individualized care) rarely results in a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach. The ability to solve unique problems on-the-fly is critical. These two facets/orientations go hand in hand. Finally, to truly bring ultimate success/effectiveness to you and your customers in healthcare, a ‘team’ orientation is also required. While it is fine if you have the first two aspects on your own, when you can combine your drive and skills with others, the combined/synergized efforts far outpace the individual efforts on their own. Let’s all strive to pursue these three driving factors of success in healthcare!

Bad days happen to everyone at some point. Sometimes, life just throws you a pitch you never saw coming and it catches you off guard. These can't be helped. By contrast, when you are ‘anticipating’ and ‘planning’ on a bad day to come, there are different dynamics in play, many of which can be dealt with. When one ‘plans’ on the upcoming day to be ‘a bad one’, chances are more than likely their self-fulfilling prophecy will come true, not only for themselves, but others around them who fall into their sphere of doom. Clint shares some thoughts on why we must guard against these little black cloud moments.

The key to ongoing success in healthcare, now and especially in the future, is the ability to deliver customized customer-centric service. While having some organizational ‘boilerplate’ policies/structure in place for general guidance is fine as a starting point, in order to truly institute ‘culture change’, we must rise to the next level and develop the flexibility to enable the adaptation of these baseline structures into customizable products/processes that can be molded to each individual’s needs while still being tied to successful revenue generation. Check out Clint’s ideas on ways to make this happen in your organization.

Way back in Episode #6 of the Clintcast archives, you'll find a story entitled ‘The Ham Sandwich’ which discusses a CEO’s realization that his organization was becoming unable to empower individuals to solve problems at the levels closest to them, resulting in flush-ups of problems all the way to the top. In this revisit to that episode, Clint comments on his recent chat with that same CEO and the push that has been made since that incident to learn how to provide customer-centric service and to improve the organization’s abilities to be flexible and service-oriented by being able to resolve issues at the lowest levels possible through empowerment. Listen in!

In the healthcare profession, it goes without saying that our customers generally would be prefer NOT to be our (or anyone's, for that matter) customers. Some handle this better than others. There is an occasional customer that, for lack of a better term, is a nightmare. Nothing anyone says or does seems to bring satisfaction to this person. How should we deal with these unique cases? Check out Clint's suggestions for handling these folks, and better still, documenting a case study in these instances, so we and others in the future can learn from these tough lessons to better hone our customer service skills for other customers.

When you go to your routine physical at the doctor, he/she will likely gather some data about your current condition (pulse, height, weight, etc) in order to be able to both continue a baseline history of your continual health picture as well as to get the current ‘buzz’ about your short-term health snapshot. Using these tools, he/she can then better decide appropriate courses of action for any change implementation needed in your health practices (diet, exercise, medications, etc). It is similar with our team-building practices for managers. Clint offers some thoughts to consider regarding the practice of uncovering ‘the buzz’ in your organization to better help implement necessary changes in your business environment.

If you are a leader/manager, chances are you have heard the phrase ‘got a second’ before as someone pops in front of you with an issue that, in fact, will likely take more than a short second/minute/hour to resolve. What you say in return must be well considered if you are going to be effective in your role (and they in theirs) because there is a dangerous trap there, waiting to suck up your time and resources if not addressed correctly. Get some tips on how to proactively prevent this situation and to reserve these moments for items that are truly more effectiveness/customer-service oriented!

Many who have worked with Clint or have met him in the past likely know that he is a huge fan of horse racing and that it is one of his favorite hobbies outside of healthcare. In lieu of the past weekend's running of the Kentucky Derby, today Clint discusses while he felt strongly, even months ago, that the horse called Super Saver had a very high likelihood of winning this race. In a word, it is teamwork. Like teams in healthcare, when you can put together a team of talented members with clear goals and processes and the ability to be flexible, yet positive and assertive, you have a strong ability to come out a winner in practically any endeavor. Learn how to ensure your team comes up roses!

If you ever played the childhood game ‘telephone’ (also known by many other names), you likely remember how fouled a communication can become as it is passed along/misinterpreted/altered/etc. Unfortunately, real life daily communications often get just as muddled up and the resulting failures to communicate often cost organizations untold dollars and time trying to fix what a little forethought and planning might have prevented. Get some hints from Clint to ensure that you are proactively ‘planning’ each day for muddled communications and ways to head off these failures to communicate.