At The Emory Clinic, one of our guiding principles is to be the nation’s best run academic faculty practice by creating a consistently outstanding patient experience. We are a multi-specialty “clinic” made up of 930 physicians and over 2,000 employees with sites throughout metro Atlanta. We, at The Emory Clinic, were delighted to welcome Jeff Hargett and The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center in 2005 to help us refocus our efforts on patient service and loyalty. Who better to engage in our efforts than the premier service company – The Ritz-Carlton? Jeff infused our managers, front-line employees, and physicians with renewed energy and concepts well-honed and well thought through by The Ritz-Carlton. His delivery of actionable ideas combined with humor and engaging energy truly spoke to our clinic – reminding us of the common themes we share in all service industries.

Before Jeff spoke to our management group, our clinics faced challenges of routinely devoting time to deliver key messages and cohesive communication in a nonstop workforce. Jeff’s ideas of “Daily Line Ups” and “Basics of the Day” easily translated into “Daily Huddles” and “Service Standards” at The Emory Clinic. Now if you go to any clinical site, the Daily Huddle helps coordinate and kick-off each day. This time gives employees a chance to plan for contingencies and to read an Emory Service Standard, thereby setting the tone for the day. Jeff’s focus on results and efforts to translate and customize Ritz-Carlton ideas to an outpatient medical setting proved a superb match. We have seen unprecedented increases in our patient satisfaction scores at The Emory Clinic and have received national recognition as a Success Story winner through our patient satisfaction benchmarking group. The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center, Daily Huddles, and Service Standards undoubtedly set the tone for this hard work to take place and blossom.