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C.A.R.E. stands for Courtesy, Attitude, Respect and Enthusiasm and any one of these four aspects can be a customer service positive or negative in every contact your staff has with a patient.

C.A.R.E. is a comprehensive system that actively involves employees in enhancing the reputation of your hospital as a warm and humanistic provider of choice.

C.A.R.E. is an ongoing program of customer service that involves the new staff member in the job interview, New Employee Orientation and Departmental Orientation, and current staff at all levels of the organization. Through a formal workshop setting each staff member will develop eight individualized customer service goals and their Manager will build these into their performance appraisal.

Even good employees do not automatically know good customer service nor does good patient satisfaction scores necessarily assure that you have a first class customer service program or that it assists you in being the hospital of choice.

This formal train the trainer program shows your staff why patients and their families often act in ways that they may not normally act. The interactive workshop focuses on Surface Skills and Relationship Skills. Surface Skills are those skills we use during the first few minutes we meet someone while Relationship Skills are used to foster relationships and defuse situations where the other person(s) may be upset. Service recovery is an intricate part of this program.

In a role playing environment the employee is taught how to be in control of the situation, why things get out of control, and how to improve their conflict resolution listening skills to deescalate difficult situations.

At the conclusion of the workshop, each staff member will have developed four personal Surface Skill objectives and four relationship skill objectives that will be discussed with their Manager/Supervisor and formally added to the employee performance evaluation. Many staff performance evaluations contain one or two sentences relating to customer service and are not backed by any training program.

Surface Skills are those skills that can be taught to assure that when meeting a patient or member of their family the employee can assure that that the meeting is friendly, warm and assuring. Relationship Skills are those skills that can be used to assure difficult and volatile situations can be deescalated. Most difficult situations can escalate and create a negative situation because staff is not formally trained to handle situations such as this. Identifying, responding and managing Patient Complaints and Concerns is a major part of the C.A.R.E program. Individual employee workbooks are furnished that each employee completes during the workshop.

Aspects of the program can be included during the initial departmental interview and are easily integrated into both the New Employee Orientation and Departmental Orientation.

In a separate workshop Managers and Supervisors will be taught how to talk with prospective and current staff about the importance of delivering and maintaining effective and outstanding customer service.

The C.A.R.E. program has been adapted to physicians office staff and your trainers can train them as well.

Additional Options to the C.A.R.E. program include

• Mystery Patient Program with comprehensive evaluation
• Hospital and Departmental Customer Service Perception Audits will be conducted at no additional charge
• Coordination with your Patient Satisfaction Survey. Most information aggregated from Patient Satisfaction Surveys is global and it is difficult to identify exactly where breakdowns are occurring and why.
• Focus groups to supplement or completely replace your current Patient Satisfaction Survey. It has been shown that skillfully conducted focus groups provide much more information and gives the patient and their family more time to articulate their concern or disappointment.
• A telephone courtesy training program, for selected staff that can include physicians office staff.

“You cannot change what you do not acknowledge”