Dear Medical Group Executive,
If you provide great medical outcomes and still are concerned about creating loyal patients
…This May Be What Just What You've Been Searching For.
Practicing medicine is tough enough, let alone operating in a financial environment that is beyond demanding. The AMA calls it "fragile", the MGMA calls it "grim". Whatever words you'd use, it's an environment that punishes mistakes, especially those that pit your patients against you.
Yet, there are a handful of mistakes that are common among medical groups. Largely, they’re the result of popular myths, lack of good information, and key misunderstandings.
The bad news is that you’re likely wasting money you don’t need to be. And waste can be devastating when you’re operating on margins as thin as yours. The good news, though, is that you can create a significant shift in your finances, create better experiences for your patients and staff, and position yourself well in comparison to other medical groups.
And we can help.
Years ago, we began training frontline staff members in face-to-face interactions. We interviewed staff members to learn about their most challenging interactions. And we turned those into standardized patients—simulated interactions so accurate that they seem real to experts and the people being trained. And our clients have told us we've gotten pretty good at it.
“I was amazed by the resemblance of the training scenarios to the real thing - having been in a couple of situations on which training scenarios were based - and it was great to have the opportunity to do them over again, this time with expert guidance in developing an approach for future use in my clinical practice.”
Shift supervisor who attended our training
“The hospital death bed scene was especially impressive. I knew that planned improvisation could be a useful teaching tool but you and your group were amazing. The way you brought the charged emotion of the hospital into the training session made it such a valuable tool for maximizing learning.”
Author and educator, Dr. Jeanette Franks
Our method gives us the unique perspective of seeing many different caregivers work with the same “difficult” patient. And we noticed what I’m sure you’ve noticed, that
some interactions go far better than others do.
In fact, we noticed a very important pattern. We saw it again and again, whether we were working with neo-natal nurses, nurses assessing developmental loss, therapists, organ donor coordinators, AIDS volunteers, or medical caseworkers.
One caregiver would walk away from a sufferer feeling satisfied and successful, even joyful. Another would leave the same sufferer feeling angry and stifled, having made little headway.
As we looked closely at the interactions that seemed most successful, we recognized some similarities. In the encounters that were most successful, caregivers found a way to create rapport with their patients.
- The caregiver focused his attention in a particular way.
- The comfort and experience of the sufferer became an important element of the interaction.
- And that shift in focus led the caregivers in effective encounters to ask different questions and make different suggestions than those in ineffective encounters who got stuck somehow simply “doing their jobs.”
That probably doesn’t surprise you. But what’s more, the ability to create and sustain rapport doesn’t just make for great experiences for patients.
The ability to make your compassion clear to patients and their families is critical to the health of your medical group.
Here’s why.
You know malpractice costs are skyrocketing. In 2004, the average physician was a magnet for $15,700 in liability. But most malpractice suits, 8 out of 10 in fact, don’t come from medical negligence. They come from patients who feel disrespected, unheard, and misled or kept in the dark.
And that unmet need for empathy doesn’t have to rise to the level that invites malpractice claims to cost you money. In fact if your staff is like most, they spend 29% of their time resolving conflict. That’s almost 1/3rd of your labor cost lost to miscommunications. Suppose you have a staff of 50 care givers and an average labor cost of just $40,000 per employee.
That comes to $580,000 wasted on conflict.
It doesn’t matter that you’ve invested time and money finding and hiring the best. The money’s still gone. And there’s more.
You’re losing one in every seven patients because of the way your staff treats them
A recent Harris Poll revealed that over a five year period a handful of patients will leave medical practices because their doctors aren’t up to date with medical advances. Or are simply incompetent in the patients’ eyes. But more patients leave because they don’t like the staff. Twice as many patients leave because they aren’t treated with respect. And almost three times as many—one of every seven patients in your practice—leave because their doctor doesn’t listen carefully to them.
In short, your medical group is likely losing hundreds of thousands of dollars or more every year. And it doesn't matter that you practice good medicine, or what’s happening in the economy, whether managed care is working, or how much you get compensated by Medicaid and Medicare. Medical groups lose money because their patients don't see that that the staff is paying attention and really cares.
Of course, you're staff doesn't need to learn to be compassionate. They already are. They need to learn to make their natural compassion visible to patients who are in distress.
But You Can't Settle...
for generic communication training. Most of the communication training you’ll see out there is simply learning to repeat what your patient has just said to you. If you’re afraid it won’t do the job, you’re right. You can end up with empty aphorisms. Or worse, teaching your staff words that convey no empathy and leave your patients feeling like victims.
You’re not just out the money and time, you have staff that thinks they’re more skilled when actually they’re just more dangerous.
So, I set out to find a skill set that would help frontline caregivers create connections with their patients—dependably and reliably—even when patients are most difficult to reach. And boy did I find one. The core skills we teach were developed by Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist. They’ve been in use around the world for forty-five years.
But we didn’t stop there.
To adapt Dr. Rosenberg’s process specifically for the needs of care givers, I hired some of the best trainers in the country. One of our trainers, for example, travels the world training others to teach empathy. And another is publishing a book on compassionate communication in healthcare. When we brought it all together, we had a process specifically designed for the interactions between patients and care givers.
The Skills That Create Loyal Patients
Using our process, medical staffs have learned
- How to make their natural compassion visible to patients
- How to recognize when they don’t have a high quality connection with a patient
- How to step off the “emotional line-of-fire” with a “difficult” patient
- How to refocus patients on their dreams instead of their nightmares, and
- How to negotiate solutions that work for your medical practice as well as your patients
Since then, we’ve trained care givers from physicians to phone staff, nurses, security personnel, pastoral care, mental health specialists, respiratory;therapists, department managers, and executives. And the results have been very gratifying.
Staffs have returned from training with new skills and a new approach. They’ve learned to uncover and embrace patients’ needs. Confrontations have declined. Some families that had previously experienced problems have been so impressed they’ve actually delayed transfer out of units we’ve trained.
Not only that, some staffs have realized they have a number of families on the floor that were displaying similar behavior and likely had similar needs to those they worked on in training. So, they’ve become better prepared to anticipate the needs of this entire group of families and to create policies and practices to give those families a better experience of care (both keys to creating higher patient satisfaction and loyalty).
Now, as useful as the one-on-one training format is, it's just too limited and too limiting for many medical groups. My big vision is to make this potentially life-changing experience available to any caregivers anywhere that are willing to learn.
If you can bring in training, great. We’d love to hear from you. But many groups can’t. It means working out shift schedules, flying trainers in or flying your staff out, paying trainers to conduct the training, and paying your staff to attend.
That’s just too big an obstacle for many medical groups.
That’s why we’ve created Healing from the Heart. To get past the limitations of training, we’ve taken the best lessons and features of our in-person training and put them in a convenient workbook format that;your staff can take anywhere and work through at any time.
Take advantage of our years of coaching front line staff members through their toughest encounters with patients and co-workers. Here’s just a sample of what your caregivers will learn using this system:
- How to quickly identify the root of an upset patient's concern.
- Patients camouflage their feelings. We all do it. We’ve been raised to. But your staff can learn to smoke them out easily.
- Eight common strategies for comforting patients (that your staff is using right now) that often backfire.
- Three things you can do to set the stage for creating powerful experiences with patients—before you even open your mouth.
- Two questions that can open up a patient. Why staff members are afraid to ask. And how they can ask with confidence.
- How to take a powerful stand with a patient without alienating him.
- How to uncover the needs hidden in your patients’ accusations and victim language.
- How your staff increases your costs and upsets patients by trying to solve their problems too soon. And what they can do instead to create great experiences.
- QTIP—Quit Taking It Personally. How often do you hear or give that advice? But what’s the alternative? We’ll give your caregivers a simple question they can ask themselves that will help them step off “the emotional line of fire” with patients.
- The powerful skill your patients learned as children that puts your staff on the defensive. And how to deal with it gracefully.
- The key confusion that sabotages the good solutions your caregivers propose to patients and the distinction that clears it all up.
- How your staff's instinct to commiserate with patients puts you at risk and what they can do instead that will uncover openings for great service
And that’s not all. You’ll also find modules that will help your staff take a stand and work more effectively with each other.
- How to gain authentic buy-in when a staff member says "no".
- You want your staff to recognize policy but you don’t want speaking and thinking in “bureaucratese”. They’ll be more powerful when they translate “have to”, “should”, and “must” into active choices. We’ll step them through the process.
- You want to acknowledge your staff members' needs. But you don’t want them to run all over you. Here’s the key.
- How to create more powerful relationships whether you’re managing up or managing down.
But Healing from the Heart Self-Training System isn’t just a script;from some stand-up-in-front-of-the-room-and-talk seminar. Our system;comes directly from the live coaching we’ve provided for face-to-face interactions. And we’ve optimized it for self-training.
Just look how far we’ve gone in order to maximize your staff’s ability to create powerful relationships with patients and their families.
Learn Fast And Learn Thoroughly
We’ve incorporated the latest in accelerated learning techniques. There are plenty of examples, questions with sample answers, and opportunities to practice the skills in the context they encounter every day on the floor. We’ve also included something you rarely see, examples of coaching from our training sessions so your staff can see what it’s like to use the skills in stressful situations. We’ve even created a way to make the training sessions interactive for your staff as they work through the book.
Get Answers To Your Toughest Questions
No matter how good the learning materials are your staff will have questions. You’ve probably noticed that 30 days or so after a training, once you’ve had time to digest the material, the questions pop up. You’ll want to clarify a point, or find out how a skill applies in your environment. It could be anything from, “How do I talk to my team when they’re not enforcing our policies?” to “What do I answer when a mother asks what she should tell her son about God?”
Where most print-based training materials leave your staff high and dry, Healing from the Heart continues to give you support. Every Self-Training System includes a certificate for participation in a follow-up Question & Answer Tele-seminar hosted by an Interplay trainer/coach. So your care givers have the chance to get answers to the most pressing questions about applying the system back on the floor.
Create Lasting Change
Learning skills is a good start. But your staff will need support to modify their beliefs and behaviors if you want to see that training make a difference in your medical group next week and next year. That’s why we’ve included sections in the workbook that take advantage of the most recent breakthroughs in creating lasting change.
And we offer a full one-year subscription to Mastering Empathy, our monthly electronic support curriculum. Each lesson includes a review of a critical skill, support resources, exercises learning partners can use to deepen their skills, and a true story of staff members offering compassion to patients.
The Healing from the Heart Self-Training System
The Healing from the Heart self-training system isn’t just some generic book on communications. It’s a system that includes all this
- A Healing from the Heart workbook with eighteen sections in which I explain and illustrate not only the process but the mindset and focus behind making your compassion visible to patients.
- special sections that accelerate your staff’s learning by inviting them to put themselves in their patients’ place or state how they’d apply what they’ve learned back in your environment
- role plays based on trainings we’ve conducted that bring the learning to life by demonstrating the step-by-step interactions complete with coaching
- exercises that lead your staff to examine their own beliefs and your organizational structures that support them in making their compassion visible or make it more difficult, so the changes they’re making stick and continue to be effective over time
- A Healing from the Heart pocket card they can carry with them or post by their station with reminders for putting the system into action
- A Certificate for a 60-Minute Question & Answer follow-up tele-seminar
- a registration for each user for a 60-minute tele-seminar hosted by an Interplay trainer. They can submit their most pressing questions and hear answers to the questions other staff members have found important.
- Request the Deluxe Package and in addition you’ll get a Certificate for a 12-month subscription to the Mastering Empathy monthly e-mail support curriculum. Issues include features such as:
- an article reviewing a critical skill or perspective,
- exercises for deepening understanding of the skills, and
- true story of a caregiver making compassion visible to a patient.
Full Year/No-Risk Whatsoever/No Hassle Guarantee
“I’m certain this system will teach your staff valuable skills. Take a full year to put the program through its paces. See for yourself what it can do for your team. If at any time you’re not delighted with the value you receive, return the materials directly to me and I’ll instruct my staff to refund the full purchase price, with no hassles.”
Tim Dawes, President
Interplay Press
See For Yourself
Inability to demonstrate empathy. It may sound abstract, but it's far from that. In fact, it's costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars right now. And you can start creating great experiences for your patients, change your medical group’s financial health for the better, and position your group for prosperity, starting right now.
Just choose your system. To get the workbook, the pocket card, the 60-minute Q&A Follow up Tele-seminar, and the full-year subscription to Mastering Empathy, order the Deluxe System. To get the first three components only, order the basic system.
We’ll send your Healing from the Heart Self-Training Systems right off to you. We guarantee your satisfaction, 100%.
I’m excited for you to get started! I’d enjoy hearing about your successes.
Best regards,
P.S. Wow, that was a lot to tell you. I'll bet you feel as though you've just completed a unit of the workbook!
P.P.S. If you're still not sure, think about one more thing. I'm convinced that your commitment to transforming your medical practice will not only save you money, it will make you money. As you've seen, I guarantee the system. But there's more.
I've seen this program change people's lives. In fact, I regularly hear from folks we've trained who not only have better relationships with their patients but better relationships all through their lives--the social worker who's getting along with his wife, the physician who's finally understanding her daughter.
What's the point of all your training and your skills, medical or otherwise, after all? It's fulfilling your mission, right? Not only doing no harm, but bringing healing to your community.
What if you invested in that--your mission, your passion, creating powerful experiences of healing--and you found it also paid off for your medical group? What if you invested in making your medical group financially sound and discovered your investment also helped bring more compassion into the world, especially for people who are frightened and in pain?
What if you brought that vision to your medical group? What kind of place would it become? Are you willing?
Interplay Press, LLC
2829 W. Lk. Sammamish Pkwy SE., Bellevue, WA 98008
Copyright © 2005 Interplay, Inc.
All Rights Reserved. |
Healing from the Heart is an important contribution to the humanization of health care. I would definitely link patient safety and quality to the importance of health care providers learning this process.”
Dr. Nancy Moore, Sr. VP Healing Health Services, Chief Nursing Officer, St. Charles Medical Center, Redmond, OR
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“The concepts and exercises that Tim Dawes provides in Healing from the Heart will serve as a valuable resource to healthcare providers as they work to strengthen their communication with patients.”
Pamela Popp, Senior Director, Office of Risk Management, Stanford University Medical Center, and Past President of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM), Palo Alto, CA
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“The NAHC puts a premium on the relationship between the family and caregiver. Healing from the Heart will be a useful tool to foster that relationship.”
Mary St. Pierre, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs, National Association for Home Care and Hospice (NAHC) Washington, DC
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“Tim Dawes’s workbooks avoid the pitfalls common to other manuals on patient service. Instead of merely instructing caregivers to parrot a patient’s judgments, it gives them concrete ways to draw out patient needs that staffs can respond to.”
Pam Kohles, Employee Health, Education, and Infection Control Coordinator,
Lincoln Surgical Hospital. Lincoln, NE
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“With its emphasis on practical ways to show empathy, Healing from the Heart will truly help nurses increase levels of both patient and nursing satisfaction.”
Loretta Turon, RN, MSN, MBA, CNA, Director Medical/Surgical, St. Joseph Medical Center (An ANCC Nursing Magnet)
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“What an amazing tool! Easy to understand and very true to life.; The coaching dialogues will help caregivers apply the skills back on the floor.”
Maureen Mahoney, Director of Service Excellence, Childrens Memorial Hospital, Chicago, IL
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“I like the approach in Healing from the Heart. It’s almost as if Tim were with me coaching me through a live session.”
Wally Leary, Director of Diversity,
Erlanger Health System, Chattanooga, TN
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“The central skill in empathy is the ability to uncover and meet needs, our patients' and our own.; Healing from the Heart gives you a step-by-step process to do just that.”
Kurt O'Brien, Organization Development Consultant, Organization Development & Training, University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, WA
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“Cutting-edge health care recognizes the central role of the relationship between the caregiver and the patient. In Healing from the Heart, Tim Dawes gives medical staff a “how to” guide for nurturing that relationship.”
Tammy Ream, MPAS, PAC, Coordinator of Clinical Education, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center PA Program, Midland, TX
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“I see a lot of training material in my job. What strikes me about Healing from the Heart is the level of detail and the quality of the examples. The role plays will help put the skills into action.”
Tulika Bhardawaj, Assistant Manager-Training , GE Healthcare, New Delhi, India
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