The 4 Ps

What are the 4 P’s? Who cares.

I’ll tell you just so it doesn’t get in the way.

• Pain
• Potty
• Position
• Pause

Ok, someone’s slogan to break it down to the lowest common denominator. This is basically a motto the hospital is pushing to help patient satisfaction scores. I’m told this by multiple staff members throughout my stay.

This also makes perfect sense because I used to manage support services in hospitals for 10 years.

So basically I’m sure it goes like this.

• Patient satisfaction scores are huge in getting  hospitals rated & such.
• So let’s define a satisfaction survey we can ensure we rate great on. We’ll talk about the 4 P’s.
• Push information on these 4 Ps so we’ll rate great when the patients take the survey since everybody covered them.
• Whew hoo. All is wonderful.

First of all this is so lame. The staff even knows it’s lame and makes fun of it to the patients, building some rapport so the patients will score them well. This might have worked over the past 10 years but it ain’t going to work much longer.

With the new marketing/social media, things are changing, right? Everybody has a voice. Everybody can blog, tweet, Yelp, whatever… You find out what they really think. It’s transparent. Does your hospital suck or does it not suck? Do people care or do they not care. Make your hospital not suck. Hire people that care.

I had so many different experiences that really went into what I truly thought.

Some very cool staff. Some lame.

• Threw me into a dirty room. Just pulled the bed out.
• Rookie nurse trying to stick me over & over & over & giving up. Uh, maybe train folks a little better first.
• Some very personable nurses really made me feel at home.
• My own doc had great bedside manner. Shared information, showed concern.
• The ER doc seeemed vacant & to just so “ok whatever she said” regarding what my doc had said. So what good was he there?
• TV didn’t work.
• Gurney I sat on for hours killed my ass.
• Took me hours to get put in a room.
• Transport guy that took me to my room was super cool & engaging.
• Room was pretty ghetto regarding paint & such.
• Bed was quite comfortable.
• Temperature was artic.
• Every procedure, I would sit on my gurney in the hall forever (along with a host of other folks).
• Phlebotomist who did my last stick was a superstar – barely felt it.
• Food was terrible but not bad beyond expectation.

If you really want to achieve patient satisfaction, forget the damn 4 P’s. Satisfy the patient. Look at the experiences they have and affect those.

For instance, hire some additional transporters. For far less than you will spend on your programs, you’ll eliminate people sitting in your halls forever fuming. That would be huge. Then take your superstar phlebotomists and have them do some training regularly with the new nurses (and old nurses).

These are easy tangible things that they could do for a minimal expense. Others would be much harder (hiring the right people, painting all patient rooms). But if you do the main things right. People won’t care about alot of the other crap.

The 4 P’s does absolutely nothing to help my satisfaction.

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