Achieving Patient (aka Customer) Experience Excellence

BOCA RATON, Fla. - June 4, 2013 - PRLog -- Written by internationally acknowledged experts in the customer and patient experience movement, Achieving Patient (aka Customer) Experience Excellence: Lessons From a Successful Cultural Transformation in a Hospital clearly outlines the principles and development phases of a great customer experience transformation. Using an engaging story, it allows readers to follow the journey of Community General, a healthcare organization that went from struggling to being nationally recognized for its performance and customer satisfaction success.

Demonstrating how Community General was able to achieve its cultural transformation, the book presents valuable lessons learned that can be applied across a range of industries, including healthcare, telecom, and financial services. Each chapter begins with a case study that describes the experiences of the authors—the director of customer experience design, the director of imaging services, a consultant, and a business psychologist—allowing readers to learn from their success and struggles.

Each chapter also includes a management learning section that provides practical advice and helpful tips for healthcare managers on their journey towards achieving excellence in the patient experience. Representing decades of battle-tested experience, this book will not only help you understand the components required to build a customer-centric culture, but will also provide the mindset you will need to strike the ideal balance between patient (aka customer) satisfaction and business benefit.

About the Authors

While studying communication at Houston Baptist University, Rhonda Dishongh aspired to be a disk jockey for a heavy metal radio station. She began working as a registration representative in the emergency room of a hospital to earn extra money while in school. In those three years, she was bitten by the healthcare bug, forfeited the plan to be a disk jockey, and continued her career as a manager in the business office. Interactions that occurred during her beloved grandmother’s death inspired her to dedicate her career to designing desired experiences in healthcare. With twenty-five years of service at the various hospitals and system offices, Rhonda has been an instrumental part of the leadership team. Rhonda has contributed to teams’ successful outcomes, receiving national recognition for performance in quality and customer experience. Rhonda continues to serve as the director of Customer Experience Design and Patient Business Services.

Qaalfa Dibeehi (pronounced "alfa dibay-i") is a recognized global expert in Customer Experience with more than twenty years of experience in the customer-related space with particular emphasis on the special problems and sensitivities of organizations that have a dual commercial and social/community responsibility.

He is the chief operating and consulting officer of Beyond Philosophy, the Customer Experience consultancy. He was previously a managing consultant with Round, the customer centricity consultancy. While there, he helped develop an assessment tool that eventually won a 2003 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Innovation of the Year award. His experience also includes senior roles at Fulcrum Analytics, where he was director of their consumer and strategy consulting practices in New York and London, respectively. He has held senior strategic planning and analysis roles with Schering-Plough Pharmaceuticals and Citibank. In the early 1990s, Qaalfa worked for the city of New York and was responsible for medical, physical, and psychological occupational health standards.

Kalina Janevska is a business psychologist with expertise in analyzing and designing emotionally engaging customer experiences. She has experience helping companies in a variety of industries (e.g., healthcare, telecommunications, financial services, retail) and geographies (Europe, Africa, Asia) achieve cultural transformation.

Kalina moved to London to complete her master’s degree in business psychology, which introduced her to her job as a Customer Experience consultant in Beyond Philosophy, a Customer Experience consultancy with a global footprint.

After attending Lamar University, Greg Erickson joined the U.S. Navy and trained to become a nuclear medicine technologist. When his service to his country was complete, he settled in Houston, Texas, with his family. He started his postservice career as an assistant director in the Nuclear Medicine Department of Texas Children’s Hospital. Due to his natural leadership abilities, he quickly moved from supervisor of a single modality to director of the Imaging Department.

In 2004, he took his talents to Community General as the director of Imaging and Cardiac Cath Labs. During the next three years, he held the unique position of leading a successful department in a struggling hospital. When the Hospital System acquired Community General some years ago, Greg quickly rose to the top of the new organization. He has been instrumental in leading the facility to a top performer in his system and community, with the facility receiving national recognition for its performance.

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ISBN 9781466583085, June 2013, 137 pp