Faculty & Research
Hospitality and Healthcare Roundtable
November 3-4, 2011: Hospitality and Healthcare Roundtable
Hospitality and Healthcare Roundtable Program
Hospitality and Healthcare Roundtable Photographs
While the U.S. Supreme Court deliberates on federal healthcare statutes, the U.S. healthcare industry is moving ahead with innovative programs to save money and improve patient care. One novel step in that process was the first Hospitality and Healthcare Roundtable, which was a collaboration between the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) at the School of Hotel Administration, the Sloan Program in Health Administration at Cornell University, and numerous healthcare systems and hospitality firms.
Given the current interest in healthcare, the CHR has just made available a summary of the roundtable discussions, at no charge: "The Intersection of Hospitality and Healthcare: Exploring Common Areas of Service Quality, Human Resources, and Marketing." Some three dozen roundtable participants from both industries shared their best practices, with the goal of finding common ground and cross-pollinating towards the development of improved strategies.
"We found a remarkable number of common areas of management strength," said Brooke Hollis, executive director of the Sloan Program. "Both industries share a rapidly changing operating environment. Our goal was to begin a more formal dialogue between the fields and to identify certain key success factors for both. One of these factors is creating a culture of more respectful treatment and valuing all stakeholders. There are many other crossover ideas that are being adopted—in particular by hospitals from the hospitality industry."
"We see many issues that both hotels and healthcare systems must address," added Rohit Verma, CHR executive director and a professor at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. "Both have transient customers, food service is important in both industries, and both face considerable staff turnover. What we learned is that developing an effective culture engages staff members and promotes customer satisfaction and service excellence."
Through adoption of hospitality-related techniques, many healthcare systems have improved staff and patient satisfaction, and also reduced employee turnover. Innovations from hospitality are also being adapted for healthcare facilities. Not all facilities have the budget for significant renovation or replacement, but in those cases, participants found that a strong staff can help overcome the challenges of inflexible facilities to create an excellent patient experience.
The situation for the two industries diverges in terms of revenue streams, since hospitals will undoubtedly face reduced government payments. However, both hotels and healthcare systems must pay attention to costs. The healthcare system has the obvious difference of achieving clinical excellence in addition to service—but overall improvements in employee engagement and communication skills may be helpful in this area as well. Keeping people healthy in the first place also reduces healthcare costs.
A continuing flow of ideas between the two industries will allow healthcare to benefit from a hospitality-style approach of focusing on a service culture. At the same time, the hospitality industry can learn from healthcare executives' expertise in complex-system management, which involves complicated supply chains, multiple decision makers and stakeholders, and a collaborative approach to product and service innovation. Hollis concludes: "CHR and Sloan look forward to future exploration of these topics with our industry colleagues."