We don’t look at ourselves as a low cost provider, we look at ourselves as a high value provider. Our high value just happens to be one of the lowest costs in the industry and that also gives us great patient outcomes. We believe that we have a model that will truly revolutionize the healthcare support services industry.
When it comes to patient satisfaction and outcomes and tying financials to better quality, I’ve heard this a number of times, food service does not impact willingness to return, which is true, because people don’t have the best association with hospital food. We’re trying to change that and we’re changing that every day, so you’ll see it in the patient satisfaction outcomes, you’ll see it in the HCAHP scores.
Cost control comes with understanding what your cost should be. We know exactly how long it should take to do a certain task, that’s in every service line that we operate, so balancing low cost is not necessarily low cost, it’s high value. It’s you’re getting what you’re paying for. We know what the service expectation is, here’s what it should cost, and by having that kind of franchise approach we’re able to hold our managers accountable to managing the business to get the proper cost.
Healthcare in itself is emotional. We’re there to have a tie to the patient, it’s a simple thing of coming in with a smile. Folks know when you care, that’s something you cannot put a price tag on. That emotional connection that occurs in healthcare when people truly care, you can’t put a price tag on it.
Support services are definitely overlooked in financial strategy. I can remember way back in my career that I had a CFO telling me that my departments were a rounding error, and we represented about 3% of the hospital’s overall budget, so that’s not very much. If you look at 3% of your overall personal budget, you probably don’t manage it that tightly, but in these healthcare systems it could be $100,000,000 in expense for that department, and we treat that money just as if it were our own. We know that if we manage it effectively we can take that additional funds if needed, give it back to the hospital to provide more charitable care or to provide a better level of service by reinvesting it in our business.