2009-11-27 20:21:15 - Kristin Baird, R.N., has been helping hospitals and other health care organizations improve the patient experience through medical mystery shopping. She has uncovered some hidden issues in the process – issues that directly impact these organizations’ bottom line.

For instance:

 A high-demand orthopedics practice that was literally turning patients away due to last-minute physician personal plans that results in cancelled appointments
 Signage at a health care campus’ new senior life center prominently located right next to another sign that said “dead end.”
 An automated – and expensive – registration system that was unilaterally rendered irrelevant by a receptionist who decided to have patients re-register at the desk anyway.
 Phones going unanswered. Long appointment waiting periods. Ignored “standard” practices.

Sometimes, truly, the right hand does not know what the left is doing. And, in many cases, those on the inside simply have a different frame of reference from those who are “outsiders.”

It is no secret that the health care industry

is being scrutinized from many angles. One angle that bears more scrutiny is the patient perspective – what is the patient experience and how do issues like nurse retention, employee engagement and organizational culture impact that experience?

An outside perspective can help to unearth the issues that may be creating dissatisfaction or erecting barriers for new or returning patients. Baird has more than 30 years of experience in patient care, health care marketing, business development and administration, and has developed a unique “mystery-shopping” approach to helping clients unearth the hidden issues that may be hampering their success.

Evaluating service “from the outside in,” Baird can provide health care organizations with valuable perspectives that sometimes require simple, inexpensive, fixes to significantly impact service excellent.

Kristin Baird is available for interviews and can share her expert advice and experiences about how “mystery shopping” can provide surprising insights for health care administrators and clinicians as they work to improve the patient experience.


About Kristin Baird
With more than thirty years of experience in patient care, health care marketing, business development and administration, Kristin Baird is a talented speaker and consultant with a passion for service excellence. The president of Baird Consulting, Inc., Baird earned a BS in Nursing from UW-Madison and an MS in Health Services Administration from Cardinal Stritch College in Milwaukee.

In 2009 Baird was appointed by the Secretary of Health to serve on an advisory council for the National Health Service Corps in Washington DC.

Baird is the author of Raising the Bar on Service Excellence, The Health Care Leader’s Guide for Putting Passion into Practice, Customer Service in Health Care; A Grassroots Approach to Creating a Culture of Service Excellence, (Jossey Bass and American Hospital Association Publishing - 2000), and Reclaiming the Passion; Stories That Celebrate the Essence of Nursing (Golden Lamp Press 2005).

Baird is also the creator of Raising the Bar on Service Excellence–Step by Step, a five-part leadership development course designed to help health care leaders implement five essential competencies for building a service-centered culture. Baird has worked with hundreds of health care clients including hospitals, medical practices and long term care facilities to improve the customer experience.

About Baird Consulting
The Wisconsin-based firm provides healthcare organization with culture assessment/diagnosis, medical mystery shopping, leadership development and employee engagement. All services are centered around helping healthcare organizations to create mission-driven, service-centered cultures. Since the mid-1990s, Baird has helped health care organizations nationwide to improve the patient experience and enhance organizational culture. Baird’s culture assessment and diagnosis includes experience mapping, medical mystery shopping and focus groups to reveal the real customer experience in health care organizations. Using patient experiences, Kristin Baird and her team prescribe critical next steps for improving patient satisfaction and HCAHPS scores.

For more information, visit www.baird-consulting.com.