I work at a non-profit health system that has 5 hospitals and our organizational/leadership development program is managed through the Corporate HR dept. for all 5 hospitals in the system. They also happen to roll the Service and Operational Excellence training programs under this department so it is standardized for the entire health system. We have had good success with this model through the years. One of the biggest advantages has been sharing best practices at a system level. Additionally, we have individual HR depts at each hospital that manages the routine HR functions for that particular hospital.

We too have an OL&D department as part of HR. Your reference to having a separate department for Service Excellence is curious . . . What is its main function? Hopefully more to guide the work force in strategies surrounding patient, employee and physician satisfaction than to OWN making these customers happy. Service Excellence must belong to every employee vs sending the problem or complaint to a department for resolution. Do you agree?

I agree with Mike's comment that if there is a separate department for Service Excellence it should focus on the satisfaction componment of the stakeholders and customers. However, I would be concerned that such a department could compartmentalize the responsibility of satisfaction to a small few. At my institution we have slowly changed the culture to a service oriented organization. All employees, contractors, and physicians are expected to own the service piece of what we(they) provide. There is coordination provided by leadership and Human Resources, but the program's focus, structure, and continued development is the responsibility of an employee committee. Committee membership is voluntary and represents a large variety of departments. This has been successful, but I consider this a process and not an event. Regarding Operational excellence, that is an expectation that should be acheived by all, we handle this in a similar manner to service excellence. Coordination of these activities is based on the operation we are attempting to excel at, but employees assist in the developing drive to achieve operational excellence

Our facility has most of these functions broken into different services. Our HR department does the typical HR functions and some Employee Development but not a lot. We have an Education Department that is not only responsible for Academic Affiliations, etc but also Patient Health Education and Employee Education. This is where our "Leadership Development" programs fall. Additionally, we have a Customer Service Program that is aligned directly under our Medical Center Director/CEO. This department oversees all of the customer service initiatives here for all stakeholders (patients, employees, visitors, etc). Within that department, we have Ambassadors who make rounds on each of the inpatient units addressing concerns/questions/compliments, etc. We also have Service Partners in each of the major services. Those employees are where service level concerns, etc are referred. If that Service Partner cannot address the issue, he/she refers it to either the supervisor/manager or the Customer Service Manager.