Elevating Hospital Satisfaction
2024 - 2025
Improving the Hospital Experience for Employees and Visitors by Reimagining Hospital Retail
PREPARED BY ®
Methodology
In 2023, Lori’s successfully concluded an extensive research initiative aimed at understanding the primary factors contributing to overall distress within hospitals among employees and visitors. Understanding the problems to solve and what solutions were needed illuminated the pivotal role that retail within a hospital can play in enhancing the overall hospital experience.
Lori’s partnered with Bixa, an award-winning market research company with extensive experience in consumer research. The blend of qualitative and quantitative research methods provided a comprehensive view of our targets, with depth of insights to drive confident business decisions. The results were statistically significant given the large, national sample of participants.
3 Target Groups:
• Hospital Employees
• Hospital Patients
• Hospital Visitors
*Bixa custom research, n=1,235
Methods Used:
• Quantitative Survey Research
• Qualitative Focus Groups
• Qualitative1:1 Interviews
Analysis Approach:
• Descriptive Statistical Models
• Inferential Statistical Models
• Cluster Analysis
The Hospital Challenge
The way people experience healthcare has seen dramatic change over the last decade and has only accelerated post-pandemic. Patient lifestyles have changed as they shift their daily lives, including healthcare, online. Telehealth has exploded and home healthcare, physician groups, and urgent care centers are drawing patients and employees away from the traditional hospital.
Employees left are pressured to fill the gaps, performing non-clinical tasks, working long hours, and needing second jobs to make ends meet. Patients and visitors suffer from boredom and long waits for care. Stress, burnout, exhaustion, and frustration are running rampant in hospitals, impacting employee attraction, retention, job satisfaction, and overall patient satisfaction. Given these trends, retail spaces within the hospital are also experiencing change. There has been a shift in who is shopping, how they shop, and what they need.
Hospital employees now make up the majority of shoppers to the gift shop.
EMPLOYEES
VISITORS
What shoppers buy has shifted to food, beverages, and necessities.
By addressing these consumer shifts, retail can address many of the challenges hospital employees and patients are experiencing.
Hospital gift shops have historically been a space to buy last minute “Get Well” or “Congratulations” gifts, or to purchase items a patient or visitor might have forgotten for an overnight stay. With the evolving landscape, the gift shop has become a place of respite, social interaction, and refueling for exhausted hospital employees. Therefore, the ‘traditional’ hospital gift shop needs to evolve, and in so doing can positively contribute to reducing stress, improving morale, and increasing overall hospital satisfaction.
Hospitals need to deeply understand the emotional condition of both their employees, patients, and visitors to explore the role retail plays on campus. Only then can solutions be implemented that positively impact the overall hospital experience, satisfaction, and ultimately the hospital’s bottom line.
Hospital Employees and Visitors
STRESS
Hospital employees experience mental, emotional, and physical stress given the demands of the job.
31% of hospital patients and visitors experience stress related to care, but 25% also struggle with boredom.
EXHAUSTION
Employees use breaks to combat exhaustion.
63% want to relax on break .
Top 5 ways employees relax on break:
• 57 % interact with cell phones
• 56% socialize with co-workers
• 46% eat
• 36% shop
• 31% talk on the phone
TIME PRESSURE
Due to busy schedules, hospital employees can’t make time to do what they love or daily chores, which further contributes to their overwhelming stress.