Review: Service Fanatics: How to Build Superior Patient Experience the Cleveland Clinic Way

Service Fanatics: How to Build Superior Patient Experience the Cleveland Clinic Way by James Merlino
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This doesn’t feel like a normal how-to book. Instead, it is mostly reflections of the author’s journey creating a customer satisfaction program at Cleveland Clinic and at other places where he has consulted. This seemed quite high level and anecdotal, without consistent recommendations coming out of them. One thing to keep in mind is that the author had strong upper management sponsorship of the satisfaction program. Without strong backing, I suspect the outcomes would have been drastically less interesting. Also note that, while the author has consulted at a number of organizations in different industries, a majority of this book is focused on the world of the hospital, with doctors and groups holding much of the political capital running the organization. Not every organization is comparable, and the suggestions may or may not apply. But overall, I am a sucker for good business anecdotes that illustrate common business processes in new ways. I found many of the anecdotes were good at illustrating the processes the author was promoting.

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