Arnold Palmer Hospital
Instructions: Read the case and answer the following questions. Your answers can be type-written and not exceeding than 1 page.
Arnold Palmer Hospital’s of Jay Heizer and Barry Render (2014) Operations Management Sustainability and Supply Chain Management. Eleventh Edition. Pearson.
“Founded in 1989, Arnold Palmer Hospital is one of the largest hospitals for women and children in the U.S. with 431 beds in two facilities totaling 676,000 square feet. Located in downtown Orlando Florida and named after its famed gold benefactor, the hospital, with more than 2,000 employees, serves an 18-county area in central Florida and is the only Level 1 trauma center for children in that region. Arnold Palmer Hospital provides a broad range of medical services including neonatal and pediatric intensive care, pediatric oncology and cardiology, care for high-risk pregnancies and maternal intensive care.
Quality health care is a goal all hospitals profess, but Arnold Palmer Hospital has actually developed comprehensive and scientific means of asking customers to judge the quality of care they receive. Participating in a national benchmark comparison against other hospitals, Arnold Palmer Hospital consistently scores in the top 10% in overall patient satisfaction. Executive Director Kathy Swanson states “Hospitals in this area will be distinguished largely on the basis of their customer satisfaction. We must have accurate information about how our patients and their families judge the quality of our care, so I follow the questionnaire results daily. The in-depth survey helps me and others on my team to gain quick knowledge from patient feedback.” Arnold Palmer Hospital employees are empowered to provide gifts up to $200 to patients who find reason to complain about any hospital service such as food, courtesy, responsiveness or cleanliness.
Swanson doesn’t just focus on the customer surveys which are mailed to patients one week after discharge, but also on a variety of internal measures. These measures usually start at the grassroots level where the staff sees a problem and develop ways to track performance. Some of the measures Swanson carefully monitors for continuous improvement are morbidity, infection rates, readmission rates, costs per case and length of stays.”
- Pediatric focused hospital such as Arnold Palmer Hospital will always receive patients. Hallmarks of care in a hospital are in the capabilities of the doctors and nurses to treat the patients. Focusing on quality of care is redundant. Critique this statement.
(5 marks)
- Customers are not the only source for feedback. Discuss mechanisms that can be employed by Swanson to collect information apart from customer feedback for the purpose of continuous improvement.
(5 marks)
Answer for question 1:
Quality is very important for all type of business including hospital. Although they are receiving lots of patient but if they will not focus on the quality they may lose their reputation and in the result they will lose their customer i.e patient. Quality helps to maintain customer satisfaction and reduce the risk of any potential irregularity or damages. Quality can help to the hospital to achieve their goal in many way some of the importance of quality are given below.
Retaining patient.
Patient always expect for quality treatment. If hospital fail to deliver such type of quality treatment they will try to find out any other hospital. Quality is very important to satisfying patient and retain their loyalty so they will continue visit to the hospital if they face any issue.
Reputation
If hospital focus on quality treatment and always try to meet the expectation of patient so they will recommend others for this hospital. Now a days people share their point of view on social media and if hospital meet their expectation, they will post favourable comments about the hospital. Hence by the good quality treatment, reputation of the hospital will be increase and will help to attention for future customer.