To Gain Employers Customers, Examine Their Needs

The role of a hospital plays in helping other businesses to grow the health of their employees is a huge responsibility. Businesses today are the primary provider of health insurance for employed Americans, and the costs of providing care pose a big concern.

Companies are proactively looking for ways to better control their costs of healthcare through better utilization, better negotiation with third-party payers, creating safer work environments, and working with employees to help to prevent, rather than merely treat, the onset of disease.

Who better to partner with employers in meeting these goals than the local hospital? 

It’s important to consider that the employer-as-customer typically has a different set of needs than other community members. Because they are providing both a work environment and provide for the coverage of healthcare needs, they’re in the unique position of influencing a person’s healthcare consumption. So, it’s incumbent on the hospital or provider to understand the needs of the employer as they build programs or determine how best to deliver services.

An occupational health program is the typical partnership between a hospital and its business community. The usual program includes working with employers to:

• Treat worker’s compensation injuries
• Make the work environment safer to avoid injury
• Shorten return-to-work parameters through job adaptation
• Provide pre-employment screening
• Ensure compliance with OSHA and NIOSH standards

When thinking of the employer as customer, however, there’s a greater opportunity to think beyond just meeting the needs of the worker in the workplace. It extends to managing the overall health of the business’s employee population—and can even extend to the overall management of the health of covered lives.

How can a hospital best meet the needs of its employer community? A key first step is to find out what those needs are, as would be done for any other customer. If there’s already an established occupational health program, use the sales team that supports that program to survey the company.   

Find out how that employer perceives your hospital. Ask some questions to help better understand the way they view your value:

• Do they see you as a partner in managing their employee health, or do they experience glitches in service?
• Do their employees have a good experience, or do they complain about not being seen in a timely or convenient fashion?
• Do you provide the employers with timely information when they have used your services?
• Do they have access to your care providers as much as they need to?
• Do you provide them with education to keep them current?
• Do they view you as their “one-stop” resource for health-related issues?
• What do they see as their greatest need in the next one, two and three years?

All of this information can better help you to meet the needs of that employer resource in very different ways than you may currently be doing. Become a trusted partner and your employer customer, if pleased with their care experience, will refer their families and friends to your facilities—thereby solidifying your role as provider of choice in your community.

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To discuss how your organization can earn new customers and improve its customer service delivery, contact us via the Web

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