What hospitals can learn from the hospitality industry

A strategic look at what hospitals stand to learn from their neighboring industry, hospitality. Though serving different purposes, both sectors share potential success factors. In terms of developing a stronger sense of customer satisfaction for the patient, many lessons can be learnt from analyzing what hospitality strives to do well.

Some parallels between hospitals and hospitality

At first sight, the healthcare and hospitality industries appear to be miles apart. However, a closer look reveals many parallels between the two - and these are not limited to the common Latin root of the words hospital and hospitality. The core mission of a hospital is to provide comprehensive medical care to patients. Hospitals are about making sure that sick people get healthy. The core mission of a hotel is to provide safe, comfortable and hospitable accommodations to guests. Hotels are about making sure that tired and hungry people get shelter, food and feel welcome.

What is the common thread in these two missions? Both are about making people feel better after their stay than before. One could also say that the commonality lies in the fact that both focus on providing an experience of care and on ensuring the well-being of individuals who stay with them. Both institutions prioritize creating a safe, comfortable and supportive environment for their respective customers — patients in a hospital and guests in a hotel.

The halo effect of hospitality for patient satisfaction

Many hospitals understandably focus on the quality of medical care as a key indicator of their performance. However, in a context where patients are increasingly perceived as “consumers of health care services”, patient satisfaction becomes an increasingly important metric. In this context, hospitals need to face a paradox.

Healthcare services have a front-of-the-house and back-of the-house logic that is not dissimilar to hotels. The back-of-the-house part covers many technical aspects of medical care (e.g., surgical interventions, treatments, choice of medication, etc.) which may be either unobservable for patients or where the actual quality is difficult to judge for the non-initiated.

Paradoxically, the quality of the front-of-the-house aspect related to the room as well as the food and beverage quality is readily observable and quite easy to judge for the average patient. The consequence of this situation is what research has described as a ‘halo effect’. Patients zero in on the salient and easy-to-assess aspects (i.e., rooms and food) at the expense of those that are harder to observe and/or judge (i.e., medical care). Their judgment of the salient attributes then spills over into their assessment of the less salient aspects.

In practice, what this means is that the hospitality side of a hospital stay may have a disproportionate influence on patients’ satisfaction with their care experience. As a result, hospitals with excellent medical care, but limited attention paid to the quality of rooms and food provided may well end up in a worse place in terms of patient satisfaction with care compared to those with less excellent medical care but a strong emphasis on hospitality.

Nobody would want to draw the conclusion that hospitals should underemphasize the quality of medical care. However, to the extent that patient satisfaction with the care experience is a relevant and desirable success factor for a hospital, management should be careful not to neglect the hospitality side of operations.

From staff satisfaction to patient satisfaction - Application of the service-profit chain

The healthcare and hospitality industries also have parallels in the human resources sector. Both industries depend on a steady supply of staff for service roles that are frequently perceived as not highly desirable. Be it F&B service roles in the hospitality industry or nurses in the healthcare industry, the common denominators of these jobs are unpopular working hours, long shifts, physically demanding tasks and the need to engage in emotional labor with guests/patients that can be erratic, demanding and ill-tempered. To make matters worse, compensation and benefits for these roles are often relatively unattractive.

A key insight from the hospitality industry – or, for that matter, from the service industries in general – is that the well-being of employees and the satisfaction of guests is intimately linked. The famous ‘service-profit chain model’ expresses some of these key linkages. It suggests that internal service quality, including workplace design, job design, and rewards and recognition, among other things, is responsible for employee satisfaction, which in turn drives external service value and customer satisfaction.

Applied to the healthcare industry, this model suggests that when the working conditions of critical front-line service staff, such as nurses or technicians are improved, this should translate into greater patient satisfaction with the care experience they receive. Conversely, borderline working conditions will have a negative impact on patient satisfaction.

In every hotel and every hospital there will be a certain proportion of staff members who are intrinsically motivated by the human interaction factor involved in serving or caring for others. However, it would be foolish to count on this element alone. Getting the work environment for staff right goes a long way in terms of improving patient satisfaction.

Gaining visibility and credibility via accreditations and certifications

In an increasingly competitive market, signaling is an important device for gaining visibility and credibility. We suggest that accreditations may be an underexplored area for hospitals to sharpen their profile. For a long time, the hospitality industry has used the star system to signal quality and amenities in a property. More recently, the industry is expanding its reach and is increasingly looking for accreditations related to safety (e.g., the Safehotels label) or environmental standards (with accreditations like Green Globe, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or the Green Key certification).

In the healthcare industry, accreditations and certifications can be a useful signaling device related to standards of care or other achievements towards either public bodies, private investors or patients themselves. With an increasing focus on the ‘silver economy’ (i.e., older customers, guests or patients) these signaling devices may become more important in the future.

Conclusion

Hotels and hospitals share more challenges and possible success factors than meet the eye. Both should aim to meet the needs of those they serve with a high standard of service, emphasizing the importance of a positive experience. In both cases, attention to detail, empathy, and a commitment to excellent service are crucial. In that respect, hospitals have lessons to learn from the hospitality industry. And, who knows, maybe the learning could go both ways? As the legendary Horst Schultze of Ritz-Carlton fame put it: