Today’s market lends itself to fierce competition. For the sake of short–term sustainability, some companies make layoffs, some cut material costs. Some companies outsource their labor to other countries. The Methodist Hospital System is responding to this competition quite differently.
Rather than cut back on services and downgrade the materials required to administer health care, Methodist is cranking up their customer service, designing their new Stone Oak hospital to cater to the oft–neglected needs of the patients and their families.
This new development, known as 'The Hospital of the Future,' is the result of an international architectural competition. The winner of the contest and designer of the new Stone Oak facility is H.O.K., a prominent New York architectural firm. Dean Alexander, CEO of the new Methodist Stone Oak Hospital, was impressed with the modern and ergonomic design. Alexander did have to tame their architecture, becauseas Alexander says, “This is South Texas.” Now he feels like it “looks progressive, but fits into our community.”
Being 'The Hospital of the Future’ is about more than technology. Alexander points out that they will “have the highest tech available at the time, but the hospital of the future is such because of its ergonomics and way finding.” The heart of the new hospital is a strikingly logical and surprisingly uncommon design. Rather than having remote entrances plastered with ambiguous directions to different departments, the new hospital will feature a single entrance with five clearly delineated portals of care. The family and friends can wait in one clear waiting area while the patient is personally escorted through the inviting facility.
The Methodist system recognizes that medicine is becoming a consumer product. In that spirit, everything they do is to improve customer satisfaction. They’ve even gone so far as to change the standard room design, arranging the rooms so that the patients can see their caregivers walk by, and feel less isolated during their hospital stent. The different, more costly room design at Methodist Stone Oak is only the 6th instance of its utilization because, as Alexander says, “we did things the way we did them because that’s the way we did them.”
A veteran of hospital administration, Alexander knows that a hospital is nothing without the right staff in place. “We will not be the hospital of the future until we marry high tech with high touch,” says Alexander. To do this, they pooled the experience of the Methodist system, creating personality profiles in order to hire only the most appropriate people to the Stone Oak staff. In addition to the new staff, they will also borrow from the leadership of other Methodist system hospitals.
The hospital, however, is not just easy to use. It is also built to accommodate local growth, with expansion plans meant to carry it through the next 25 years. The fully expandable design on a generous 40–acre plot will allow the hospital to expand according to the changing needs of the new Stone Oak community. In order to avoid the interference of construction, the hospital is built to be easily expanded without interrupting patient care.
Hospital CEO Dean Alexander is no stranger to hospital administration. Under his guidance, his previous hospital, Mainland Medical Center in Texas City, rose from an oppressively low patient satisfaction rate. While before Alexander’s leadership the hospital had never surpassed the 75th percentile patient satisfaction, Dean Alexander brought Mainland Medical to the 98th percentile in customer satisfaction. This dramatic success was made possible by his positive attitude and positivist thinking. He made a point of pushing the staff to their potential, and always letting them know how much their efforts mattered and were appreciated.
Before entering hospital administration, Alexander received his MBA from the University of Alabama. A native of St. Augustine, Florida, Alexander attended Alabama to be a part of their football tradition. He applies the lessons of his football days to his administrative duties, always thinking of his staff as a team, in which each role is valuable.
One of his first positions out of graduate school was as the chief operating officer of the Humana Women’s and Children’s Hospital. His work has moved him to such places as New Orleans, Tampa Bay, Houston, Texas City, and now San Antonio. Alexander is proud to be on the ground floor of such a hospital, poised to form from scratch the Stone Oak medical environment. Drawing from his vast experience, Alexander is confident that “it all comes back to one thing: providing quality patient care.”
Dean Alexander has recovered from knee surgery in college. He has brought doomed hospitals back from the brink. Now, the beautiful Methodist Stone Oak hospital rests on his shoulders. Still, he says that “the biggest challenge [he has] had in [his] life is having a 13 year old daughter.”
