Customers at the Pinnacle

Customers at the Pinnacle

Health care by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

A four-office doctor's practice is bluntly going about improving customer service, normally a black eye in the medical field. Its model is a certain five-star hotel chain.

Todd Batey, CEO of Bradenton-based Pinnacle Medical Group, has had better days than the one he had last October when he went through a stack of mail. The letters, at least 50 of them, were thematic: Replacing a human receptionist at one of the group's offices with an automated system was a debacle.

The gist of the complaints, says Batey, who later acknowledged to patients and employees that the too-much-too-soon effort was his fault, was that the "patients were telling me the place stunk."

Consider the lesson to be the cement for an already hardening realization Batey had been coming to, that customer service is everything when it comes to the business side of medicine. Quality, top-shelf care is crucial, obviously, but without high-marks in customer service, a multi-practice operation might as well shutter itself. If not, a rapidly decreasing patient portfolio will take care of that.

Since then, Batey, a one-time accountant as well as the son of Dr. Bob Batey, a late-Bradenton cardiologist, has been going about transforming the business into taking on a customer-service first mentality. It's a challenge that could take place at any business where positive customer feedback and referrals are essential to organic growth - probably every business in existence.

"I want to be the Ritz-Carlton of medical practices," says Batey, 42. "I want to be the best in customer service."

One of Batey's key recent moves to reach that goal, he says, was promoting long-time administrator and manager Janice Sorenson to the newly created position of chief operating officer.

Sorenson, a licensed radiation therapist who also has an undergraduate degree in management and an MBA, says Batey's Ritz analogy is apropos. Her experience, both working for Pinnacle and in several positions at Bradenton-based Blake Memorial Hospital, showed her that the caring, gentle approach goes a long way, especially when the customers, and patients, are usually in the midst of a difficult situation.

"From when the patient comes in the door to when they leave," says Sorenson, 44, "I want them to feel as happy as possible."

Wanting and accomplishing, the pair of executives are finding out, are two different things. The first challenge is going about changing the office culture, from the receptionists up through the doctors.

The automated receptionist, for example, has been replaced with what Batey calls a hybrid model, which uses some features of both.

Other long-standing practices that don't put service first, are being questioned. Says Batey: "We are having a lot of clashes and debates over what our culture will be."

Those clashes have led the practice to lose a few employees, Sorenson says. That was inevitable, as change is difficult, she says, and if the remaining employees are following the same mission, the attrition will be worth it.

The practice is like an infant when it comes to learning how to do customer service right, Sorenson says. The entire business, which was initially formed in 1998 as the combination of four other medical practices, has 180 employees, including 28 doctors.

Sorenson says she intends to bring in a consulting company to train all of the employees on customer service, from meet-and-greet basics to how and when to use empathetic listening skills. She also intends to continue surveying patients, to make the employees get it.

Sorenson is prepared for a slow-moving process, saying it will likely take the rest of 2007 to get all the employees practicing the best customer service techniques on a regular basis. "This isn't going to happen overnight," Sorenson says. "It's something that's going to take some time."

A refined practice

The initial idea for Pinnacle Medical Group stems from several conversations in 1994 between Bradenton doctor Bob Blackwood, Todd Batey's father, Dr. Bob Batey, and Bill Nowak, who was then CEO of Blake Medical Center. The doctors sought to grow a medical practice while maintaining the same care levels.

Dr. Bob Batey died in 1995, but the plans for a conglomerate-style medical practice carried on. By 1998, Pinnacle Medical Group was officially launched, with Nowak serving as CEO. Batey took over as interim CEO in 2003 when Nowak retired; the interim tag was dropped two years ago.

The doctors at the practice have always maintained several specialties, including internal medicine, rheumatology and cardiology, with most of them providing general family practice services. The doctors have privileges at Blake Memorial Hospital. The 2007 version of Pinnacle Medical Group is a more consolidated and refined model than what was originally put together.

The current makeup includes: the practice's flagship office on 75th Street West in Bradenton, which also serves as the group's urgent care center and is in the midst of expansion project that will add 16,000 square feet of space, almost doubling its total size; a just-renovated 20,000-square-foot office on Cortez Road, site of the automated phone fiasco; and two separate and small offices on Holmes Beach and 26th Street West in Bradenton.

In total, the two renovation projects are costing Pinnacle about $9 million, with money to pay for it all coming from some of the doctors, a few outside investors and financing.

Pinnacle has had some other recent changes, in addition to its new buildings and its customer service improvement initiative. It has a new logo and is currently undergoing a re-branding effort, improvements based mostly on sessions that came out of a late 2005 retreat attended by Pinnacle doctors and executives.

Still, all of the ides are geared toward making the entire practice a pinnacle of customer service. Says Batey: "We will never forget the importance of customer service."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Company. Pinnacle Med-ical Group, Bradenton

Industry. Group medical practices

Key. The 180-employee medical group is trying to drastically improve its customer service.