Book Recommendations

Attracting and Keeping Patients

Deciding to be the best car dealership was the moment that determined how successful Sewell’s organization would be. Strategies for service are particularly transferable to health care.

Why are female patients the most challenging to satisfy? And what can you do to increase their satisfaction with your care and service? Quinlan provides insights about how to align with female customers. While this book isn't specific to health care, it contains many thought-provoking questions that can lead to improvements in your services.

Patients value experiences in which their unique preferences are identified and respected.

Use the strategies in this book to identify and respond to expectations, manage unrealistic expectations, respond to unmet expectations, and create loyal, lasting relationships that generate positive word-of-mouth commentary.

A complete marketing plan for any practice.

How to market services, rather than products.

Gladwell writes about why major changes in our society often happen unexpectedly and as a result of small, intuitive initiatives. If you are interested in changes that can increase positive word of mouth commentary about your organization, this book can jump-start your thinking. Gladwell shows how, given the right messenger or context, people can and will radically transform their behaviors and beliefs.

Communication Skills

Very specific communication skills to save time and improve satisfaction.

Listening, reassuring, telephone contact, face-to-face interactions and more.

How to discuss tough subjects effectively and with less anxiety. Faculty for the Harvard Negotiation Project, the authors stress the need to acknowledge the other person’s feeling, and then use various strategies to bring a conversation to mutually agreeable closure. Techniques include avoiding absolute, no-room to wiggle words such as "always" or "never;" Asking for more concrete information; and asking how the other person sees it differently; inviting the other person to partner with you to resolve a situation.

Creating a Culture of Service Excellence

The successful habits of visionary companies.

Examples of dialogue to help employees be their best.

The text and striking illustrations in this children's book speak of awesome courage and everyday courage. For example: "Courage is if you knew where there were some mountains, you would definitely climb them." "Courage is two candy bars and saving one for tomorrow." "Courage is being the first to make up after an argument." You want your patients and colleagues to be brave about the changes in their lives, both positive and negative. This book could be just the mini-motivation someone in your life needs. It would make a nice addition for your reception area, regardless of the age of your patients.

Turning around Continental Airlines.

Do you ever feel challenged about how to inspire your staff to be more consistently responsive to patients? If so, this book should be on your “must-read” list, because it provides practical tips on how to work with your colleagues so that they can and will respond to your patients in the way you desire.

This is a “next-level” book. Read it for ideas when you have mastered the essentials and colleagues are asking “What’s next?” or “How can we top this?” Mitchell offers nuts and bolts applications from his experience running two retail stores that successfully sell against national clothing chains. Hint: It’s all about the systems that encourage his staff to connect personally with customers. Mitchell shares the five things that customers want even more than a convenient location and large inventory. In one anecdote, he is approached by an associate who complains that the store needs to do more advertising to draw customers in. Mitchell responds: “Better yet, you need to call some customers or write to them.”

The original story of how moments of truth theory and exercises were used to turn around a failing airline.

Reading this book just makes you want to do more for your customers.

A memorable story of how a leader helped his team survive the most difficult of times.

Senge and his co-authors have created 500+ pages of interesting theory, examples, exercises, discussion points and thought-provoking questions that will inspire you to find the time to consider, plan and implement change. You will be able to conduct an organizational diagnosis of your organization and determine if change is needed to enhance your values, your relationships with patients/members, and your team.

Breakthrough thinking techniques to help you solve problems and ignite ideas.

Filled with suggestions for improvement in health care organizations.

Difficult People and Complaints

Suggested responses for patient complaints about hospitals, physician practices and home care.

The classic text on defining difficult people "types" and how to respond to each.

Caution: If you are acting out your own favorite difficult behavior, and you like it that way, do not buy this book for your staff. James’ book is full of strategies designed to help the reader recover from criticism. She counsels that it often costs far more to constantly defend the need to be right and to be in control than it does to chalk criticism up to what she terms the "10% factor." James posits that ten percent of the time, when you buy something, it will turn out to be cheaper somewhere else. Ten percent of the time even your best friend may say something thoughtless. James also teaches how to help the verbally abusive person change, by using statements such as, "I’m sure you didn’t mean to insult me." "Is there any reason why you would want to hurt my feelings?"

Interviewing techniques, dealing with patient emotions and the most frequent "difficult patient" problems. Each chapter in this guide defines the problem of a difficult encounter, for example, anger, ambivalence, somatization, interfering family members, patients who want more than they need. The authors then provide best tools for understanding and working with the patient demonstrating the difficult behavior. Each problem is accompanied with pitfalls to avoid and a pearl of wisdom. "The process of giving bad news starts with acknowledging your own reactions to the news, then putting them inside in order to help the patient."

Elgin teaches the reader how to recognize and use the Satir Modes, created by Dr. Virginia Satir. The modes are blaming, placating, computing, distracting, and leveling. Using exercises, you practice responding in the same mode if you want a behavior to continue, and using a different mode if you want to encourage behavior change.

What to say when a patients says, "While you’re at it, could you just…" or "Sorry, hell! Do something!"

What to do when patients’ emotional and interpersonal problems impact medical treatment

When dealing with a "prickly personality," Gabor suggests listening and then asking, "Why do you feel that way?" to help you gain understanding before you present your point of view. Some of his scenarios may be more amusing than practical, as in how to tell someone that you are dating his/her former lover.

An inspiring look at how difficult people improve us. Rosen’s book stresses the value that difficult people can have for us: teaching us what not to do; giving us an opportunity to teach through example; recognizing our own flaws. "What we don’t like in another is often, but not always, something we don’t like in ourselves."

Patient Satisfaction

If you want numbers to demonstrate the financial value of a service quality initiative, this is the book for you.

Health care and non-health care strategies for improving patient satisfaction.