Poor communication and incomplete documentation can create a negative experience for a patient and directly impact whether a patient or a patient’s family seeks a plaintiff’s attorney. While data reveals that service lapses and communication failures cause an increase in both the frequency and severity of claims, there is often more at risk than just potential litigation. Having a professional liability claim can lead to licensing implications, public relations problems, accreditation issues and both short and long term financial risk.

With the appropriate motivation, the right process and the necessary tools, you can reduce your liability exposure.

Are you Five-Star? Take the quiz and find out!

Limit Liability Exposure
Stevens & Lee can provide you with a customized risk engineering program that will assist you in moving toward a positive culture to reduce risk and become a “five-star” practice, a practice that maintains a culture of patient satisfaction, service excellence and employee satisfaction. Our Five-Star Service Excellence Program is designed to reduce your liability exposure through a combination of education, training, communication and documentation services.

This program incorporates elements of traditional risk management, including assessments to identify vulnerabilities within your organization, and combines those with a focus on creating a service-oriented environment. A positive culture leads to a reduction in the service lapses and communication failures that generate claims.

Stevens & Lee’s Five-Star Service Excellence Program can be customized to address the unique elements of your practice or your organization by focusing on your specific liability exposure.

Why is Attaining a Five-Star Practice So Important?
The Five-Star Service Excellence Program will reduce both the frequency and severity of claims. In addition, it will increase your market share, energize your employees, and increase their satisfaction and your retention rate. This will make a big difference in a patient’s health care experience. How your employees interact with your patients affects your patients’ views of you and your overall practice. Creating that positive atmosphere is vitally important as patients are most likely to tell others about their opinions of your practice within a few days after an office visit.

Reduce Your Risk
You and your staff will learn:

• Interpersonal skills that convey respect and caring
• Communication skills for diffusing the angry patient, handling complaints and disclosing complications and even errors
• How to help patients develop reasonable expectations
• Collaboration techniques that help patients be accountable

Enhance Your Profitability
Your organization/practice will benefit by:

• Achieving a “preferred provider” reputation in the community
• Becoming an employer of choice
• Increasing clinician and support staff morale and retention
• Implementing patient-focused procedures that also conserve resources

Improve Recruitment and Motivate Your Employees
In addition to teaching you how to change your culture to reduce liability exposure, Stevens & Lee can show you how to use the Five-Star Service Excellence Program as a valuable recruiting tool to attract high-caliber health care professionals to your organization. We can also show you how to use the program during employee and patient evaluations and to motivate employees. Your Five-Star effort will be a major factor in creating and maintaining satisfied employees.

Customizing the Five-Star Program to Meet Your Needs
Whether your organization is a hospital, health system, retirement community, ambulatory care center or physician practice, the Five-Star Service Excellence Program is customized to suit your needs and includes four key elements crucial to success:

Culture Analysis
Stevens & Lee will conduct an analysis of your organization to evaluate the existing factors that can lead to claims. Knowing the culture surrounding your organization’s risk management performance is key to planning for improvement.

Education and Training
True service excellence needs to be embraced at all levels of the organization. This can only be accomplished through training and educational programs targeted to your specific needs to improve patient service excellence. Stevens & Lee offers a full complement of risk management educational programs.

Service Excellence Tools
Depending on your needs, Stevens & Lee can provide you with the appropriate forms and documentation procedures necessary to create and maintain an environment of service excellence. These forms will allow your organization to better involve patients in their own care.

Event Management
Stevens & Lee can provide your organization with an event management support program and workshop to provide sound risk management advice on how to handle events when they occur, minimize the potential for lawsuits and, most importantly, learn from the events to prevent such incidents from recurring.

Effective Implementation, Powerful Results
Implementing the Five-Star Service Excellence Program begins with a solid commitment from senior management and involves everyone in the organization. Each clinician and professional staff and support staff member will learn to contribute to quality health care service in a manner that is safe, efficient and competent and provides a friendly, warm and respectful experience for the patient. For the program to be truly successful, every member of the organization must be involved.

For more information, please e-mail James W. Saxton or call him at 717.399.6639.