Client Spotlight

Leaders at The Hospital of Central Connecticut had a dilemma: how to introduce some new and creative ways for enhancing the patient experience while harnessing the creative energy of volunteers. Read on for more about their approach and solution. Perhaps it will work for you!

By Anne Phelan, Director of Volunteer Services, The Hospital of Central Connecticut

A patient visits the ER at The Hospital of Central Connecticut where she is told that she needs to be admitted for a few days due to a heart arrhythmia. The patient's immediate concern is that she has a cat at home with nobody to care for it and that she has pressing business matters.

The nurse responds that HCC's Helpful Hands Concierge service could obtain a pet sitter to care for her cat and that a computer with Internet access would be delivered to her hospital room. The patient is amazed that a hospital could provide this service and, relieved of her pressing concerns, agrees to be admitted.

This is an actual scenario that occurred at The Hospital of Central Connecticut after the launch of our concierge service.

I first brought the idea of an amenities program for patients staying in the hospital to Elizabeth Lynch, vice president of human resources. During the initial planning stages, the hospital planned to develop an in-house program that would offer basic amenities to patients and ease some of their stress. Upon further investigation, it became readily apparent that we needed the help of someone with expertise in this area.

We discovered Corporate Health Group and were partnered with Catherine Baumgardner. Catherine helped us to develop tools to ascertain those patient services that the patients wanted, rather than what we thought they would want. Additionally, she created a plan for rolling out three phases of the program.

Catherine also suggested to us that concierge services for employees was a growing trend and that studies showed that incorporating employees into a service would also help with recruitment and retention issues.

It was largely due to Catherine's plan and presentation that the hospital's executive management team approved the concept and authorized Mrs. Lynch to investigate companies that offered concierge services within hospitals. Catherine directed us to three firms that provided employee concierge services.

We did site visits at hospitals using two of the companies suggested and were disappointed to learn that neither had incorporated a patient-focused piece into their service. Upon hearing our vision of a combined patient-employee program, Marsha McVicker, CEO of Errand Solutions, grasped the importance of the patient factor and changed her work model to include utilizing hospital volunteers along with her paid employees to provide service.

Today, Helpful Hands volunteers visit each patient room to offer a free newspaper and describe the services offered such as free Internet service, DVDs and music CDs, reading glasses and handmade lap blankets. Employees and patients/visitors can also receive a variety of services such as pet care, oil changes, take-out meals and dry cleaning through the concierge. For these types of services, consumers only pay the standard rate for such service; there is no surcharge for pickup/delivery, etc.

In the three months the program has been in operation, the concierge has fulfilled requests from patients including arranging free hospital transportation to their home upon discharge, research for a patient who had a term paper due shortly after her planned discharge date, laptop computers for checking e-mail, word-search puzzle books and special espresso coffee.

Employees have also received assistance for ordering flowers for their wedding, gift wrapping and mailing of holiday packages, securing event tickets, massages, oil changes and dry cleaning.

The Helpful Hands Concierge service has received numerous favorable comments from both patients and employees and the counter is constantly visited by those seeking help. We are awaiting Press Ganey patient satisfaction scores and employee turnover rates to have verifiable data on the program's success.

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