At your service
Hospital concierges provide benefits to employees
TheyÂ’ll book airline and hotel reservations, go grocery-shopping or wait at your house for the plumber or electrician.
TheyÂ’ll even walk your dog and take out the trash.
Just a phone call or a mouse-click away, these personal services are commonplace with concierges in hotels. The personal concierge services idea spilled into the boardroom almost a decade ago. Now, convenience services have become especially popular nationwide among health care institutions and companies trying to recruit and retain nurses and physicians, many of whom find that the high demand and pressures of their jobs take too much time away from managing home and family. Concierges can cross off to-do lists, saving time while relieving stress, and allowing employees to return to the business of caregiving.
“We’ve seen significant growth for our services in the last five years, with a lot of buzz in the health care community, particularly in Texas,” said Kirsten Lecky, vice president of business development with Best Upon Request, a Cincinnati-based company specializing in setting up and operating concierge programs for health care institutions.
“It’s an innovative benefits tool to help recruit and retain health care professionals,” she added. “We see it also as a service to help doctors, nurses and hospital staff focus on healing. It’s caring for our caregivers.”
Plaza Medical Center of Fort Worth began using Best Upon RequestÂ’s program on Feb. 6 after employees asked the hospitalÂ’s executive team to address their work/life balancing act. Employees wanted solutions to help them from taking off time from work to handle personal errands. The hospital researched concierge service companies and contracted with Best Upon Request. The service, which is free to employees, provides an on-site concierge, who handled several dozen requests the first week.
“They’ve been beating a path to my door,” said Christine Fredric, Plaza’s vice president of development. “They love it.”
According to Fredric, the most popular requests made so far included dry-cleaning, grocery-shopping, fixing car tires and picking up to-go orders at restaurants.
“I personally used the service to find someone to dress up as a valentine and hand out candy at the hospital on Valentine’s Day,” Fredric confessed.
Baylor Health Care System, one of the largest private-sector employers in the Metroplex, introduced the Baylor Butler service to its 16,000 employees in 2002. The no-charge service has been extremely popular within the hospital network.
At the end of 2006, 25 percent of Baylor employees had participated in the benefit, according to Mary Johnson, marketing specialist at Baylor All Saints Medical Centers.
Of the employees who participated, 91.4 percent said they received their requested services in the agreed-upon time and 88.4 percent said the benefit was useful or very useful.
However, other area hospitals donÂ’t see quite the need for the service.
Lillie Biggins, vice president of operations at Harris Methodist Hospital of Fort Worth, said their employees had not requested a special concierge service.
“We have a Team Care group of about 50 employees who listen to what all our employees need and want,” Biggins said. “A concierge service is not on our radar screen at this time.”
Biggins said Harris employees had requested a solution to their commuting times, so the institution partnered with the Fort Worth Transportation Authority for special bus and rail passes.
“We also believe we have a number of employee benefits such as free blood screenings, classes and volunteer programs that help our employees relieve their stress,” Biggins said. “We have an 85 percent retention rate so we seem to be meeting most of their needs. But if a request for a personal concierge service comes up, we’ll evaluate it.”
Contact Dillard at bdillard@bizpress.net
