Adding Value to Hospital Services - Essay Example

Healthcare facilities have an enormous task of adding value to their different service delivery because there are an overwhelming competition and complexity in the marketplace related to health provision. The health care providers can achieve this by implementing a variety of strategies and components in their pre-services, services and after services.

According to Solomon & Lessard (2016), pre-services activities are those activities that comprise of planning and making it possible for the hospitals to determine its potential customers and the type of services to be offered to each of them. A component which might be taken into account to improve the pre-service services include market and marketing research which allows the organization to determine the appropriate number of customers and the type of services to deliver. It is made possible by using various methods like the collection of data about the health care market itself, taking notes of potential customers and their frequency of visit at the hospital, also giving priority to the wants and needs of the clients and finally scrutinizing the customers habit regarding health care attention.

Enhancement of point of service is another important improvement. The services often revolve around the patients care and delivery of the health services to him/her. Likewise, there are a couple of market components and market study that can be used to suggest the proper manner in health care delivery. One of these elements includes; the point of service marketing which enables hospitals to redesign services lines around by enhancing the patient experiences rather than the financial aspects of delivery. The health care providers can realize this through introduction of multi-specialists, physician care team, increasing the count of physician patients' communications, and by remodeling the point of service to be more strategic, quality efficient and flexible.

Various improvements should be made after discharge of patients be done to achieve the goals of the health care providers (Bakakus & Mangol, 1992). One component that may be used to add value to the outpatient services includes; follow-up activities, they help create a sense of caring and concern thus leading to fostering a good rapport between the patients and the health care provider. According to Andrews & Schulman (2015), follow-up activities may also entail making calls to outpatient to know if all is going as expected or if additional prescriptions are needed. It also involves carrying outpatient satisfaction studies to determine how the treatment was done. These aids prevent pain, complications and unnecessary anxiety that may be experienced by the patient soon after leaving the health care facility. Follow-ups also play a Centre role in identifying failures and rectifying them immediately; they also give conducive room for identifying and offering necessary further services needed by the patients such as further checkups to be sure if the problem is no longer present or not.

References

Solomon, J., & Lessard, L. (2016). CarePayment Program hospital outcomes: results from semi-structured interviews with hospital staff. Journal of Health Care Finance, 42(4).

Babakus, E., & Mangold, W. G. (1992). Adapting the SERVQUAL scale to hospital services: an Empirical Investigation. Health services research, 26(6), 767.

Andrews, R. M., & Schulman, K. A. (2015). Enhancing the Value of Statewide Hospital Discharge Data: Improving Clinical Content and RaceEthnicity Data. Health services research, 50(S1), 1265-1272.