Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11572 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

Customer Reviews

wow!
Like many Disney rides, you have to wait a bit to get this book on amazon (I purchased mine directly from the publisher). But it's worth the wait. I attended the ACHE Conference in 3/2005 where the book was named the "2005 Book of the Year."

Fred Lee has written a fantastic book in "If Disney Ran Your Hospital." Not only is it a well-written book (Lee uses memorable examples, stories, and graphs to illustrate his points), but also he has chosen an outstanding topic. We need more books like this - learning from the best from other industries. Lee effectively builds the bridge, taking Disney corporate realities and turning them into approaches and strategies that hospital leaders can easily digest and apply in their hospitals.

Some of the concepts definitely stretch my current mindset on customer service (and after reading the book, you might even stop using that term). Lee talks about why perceptions are more important than reality, patient loyalty is more important than satisfaction, courtesy is more important than efficiency, and experience is more important than service. He also spends some time addressing the shortfalls of patient satisfaction surveys and competitive incentives for employees. All for the sake of his true focus of the book: to "bring out the best behaviors in workers and provide the best emotional experience for patients."

For those that are experts in services marketing or world-class hotel corporate culture, some of the concepts will be old news. Nonetheless, the way Lee specifically applies these concepts to the hospital setting is truly magical and novel.

Very Insightful Book
I agree with everyone else about how good this book is. I have been working full time in quality improvement for 12 years, and I was expecting just a rehashing of the same old theories that I have become too accustomed to hearing about. To my surprise, the book was fresh and deep and I literally learned something new on every single page - It is 216 pages long and at $27 that's about 13 cents per insight; a real bargain, I think. Oh, and remarkably it's also quite an easy read due to the excellent stories and intuitive presentation (but you may want to slow down a bit to let the lessons sink in).

... although impractical !
Ok. Let us consider it realistically and professionally. Nothing to say about the book more than what all others have said. Simply great. However, enjoying a book is not, and will never be, a goal in itself. What matters is what benefit you can get out of IMPLEMENTING what is in it.

In our case, this can be done on two conditions. The first and simple one is that everyone (I mean it) in your hospital should read and understand the book (this includes housekeepers, security guards, gardeners, ..etc).

Now comes the second and difficult condition, that is creating a culture, a working environment, an atmosphere that adopts and supports the values and ideas in the book. Unfortunately, at least to me, this seems impossible.

I am not saying that culture change or improvement is impossible. Go ahead. Do your best. We all should. I am trying to point out that trying to implement what is in the book will lead you to find out that you actually are trying to create "the city of virtues". No one could. No one will ever be able to.

A wise management professional once said: "in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is!".

Read this book at any cost. Buy it, borrow it, or even steal it!