Innovation expert puts new concept at center of medical industry

Toward the end of last year, a new book came to stand at the center of conversations. Its title was “The Age of Class” written by Kim Jin-Young, director of Severance Hospital’s Center for Creative Medicine. The book contained stories about “gyeok,” the Korean word for class or dignity, wanted by the Korean society gripped by a sense of crisis after a series of events and incidents. That did not mean the book was satirizing politics or criticizing the society, though.

The book is the story of innovation service campaigns led by Kim, who started his career at the Samsung Group and took the lead in reforming services at the Shilla Hotel and Cha Medical Group. He moved on to become Shinsegae Chosun Hotel’s chief financial officer and the Westin Chosun Busan’s general manager, before settling into his current position at Severance.

Although he is dealing with “class,” an agenda required by this day and age, the concept has been on his mind for a decade, and become just ripe enough to be discussed and shared with others, Kim said.

Kim Jin-young tells how he could change hospital operation thorough service innovation, during a recent interview with The Korea Bio Medical Business Forum, at his room in Severance Hospital’s Center for Creative Medicine.

In “The Age of Class,” he says the era of quantity has given rise to that of quality, and now people want “something” beyond the perfect quality, and that something is “class.” One can’t help but wonder then: what is “class”?

“‘Class,’ as I see it, comes from knowing one’s place no matter what position, status or moral justification he or she takes,” Kim says in a recent interview with The Korea Bio Medical Business Review. “The dictionary also defines ‘gyeok’ as the ‘sensibility or dignify that naturally harmonizes with one’s environment or circumstances.’ In short, it means to know one’s place and stick to it. If you try to move beyond the limit, you lose your class.”

That is the first question Kim also asks in his book, and then presents three criteria – “ripening period,” “attitude,” and “restrained behavior that knows the right place and time.

People these days are hardly content with “perfect quality.” They take it for granted and want more. Korea, too, had undergone the ripening period, passed the era of quantity to move to the era of quality. And now is the time for the nation to accept “class” as the value that goes beyond perfect quality, and demand it. That also explains why we – the state, business enterprises and the society as a whole – are sensitively responding to “class.”

Kim also teaches at Yonsei University’s College of Medicine, but he is not a medical doctor. There is only one reason Kim, a service expert, has come to work in a hospital, which seems to have nothing to do with non-practitioners and sets up high barriers to them: hospitals, too, have begun to want to have some “classes” of their own.

Amid the growing fervor for innovation among hospitals, the organizers of a medical conference asked him recently to lead a presentation session. He rejected the offer several times, though.

The words “hospital” and “hotel” share their etymological roots in the word “hospitality.” He, thought, however, although hotels that provide top service and hospitals providing best medical care have the same roots, it was a little too much for a person engaged in the hotel business to talk about the healthcare industry.

Eventually, he ended up giving a presentation at the conference, along with a theme park and an airport construction representative, on service innovation. And, on the occasion of this presentation, he jumped into a business that grafts service innovation at hotels to hospital operation. Kim says in the book the class of healthcare results from putting a priority on “patient experience.”

“Currently, medical treatment is focused on ‘cure,’ but it should shift the direction to ‘care,’” Kim said, citing cancer treatment as an example. “In the past hospitals only focused on treatment. From the standpoint of patients, they used to receive treatment for four hours, go home and then come back to hospitals to repeat the same process. There was nothing in between. Recently, however, cancer centers have set up facilities that teach patient about dietary and exercising habits. This is a new trend, local or foreign.”

A case in point is the Maggies Cancer Caring Center in Britain. It is not just a treatment center but provides “dolbom,” a Korean word for care. The center has set up 14 branches nationwide, which look after not only the patient but also their families, physically and mentally. They discuss, for instance, whether the patients and their families should go ahead with their work or how the bereaved families should handle economic matters when the patients die abruptly. To sum up, the center tries to make people enjoy the joy of life undeterred by the fear of death, and was selected as an excellent case by the U.K. Ministry of Health and Welfare.

One of the most common misconceptions is that introducing services will increase costs. “Innovation that spends money is not innovation,” Kim says, however.

“People think it takes money to upgrade the class of space, citing things such as changing furniture and equipment or hanging expensive paintings,” he said. “But that’s not class. You don’t need fancy lighting to improve the quality of a room. Natural lights can upgrade class a lot. Likewise, the white noise from an old radio can turn an awkward atmosphere into a comfortable one.”

One might still find it hard to shake off the thought that innovation costs money.

“I am still besieged with that question,” Kim acknowledged. “Of course change takes money sometimes. But it’s mostly a misunderstanding.”

He cites the example of wristbands that patients wear with their information on them. Patients found the original plastic bands quite uncomfortable. When the hospital replaced them with paper bands, like those seen at amusement parks, patients showed satisfaction. The price of paper bands was only a quarter of plastic bands.

Severance represents hospitals that experiment innovation through the “patient experience.” Music flows through its halls 24/7, and the hospital holds “healing concert” in his lobby. Various pictures and plastic artworks turn it into a gallery. All this could cost money, but some innovation has cost not a penny.

The “prayer project” is one of such costless projects. Before patients go into an operation, doctors say a prayer that they will do their best in surgery, as part of the project. In a situation so full of anxiety and fear, a project like this provides an unforgettable and touching experience for patients.

Kim says he hopes his book will help provide a change in perspective for readers. The age of selecting products for quality is long gone. People who buy electronic devices feel “sensitivity” and “philosophy” in them.

“It would, of course, be best if the great technological progress will cure all diseases. Will that satisfy patients and their families with just that?” Kim said. “Patients think whether they received treatment as a human, not as a thing, at the hospital. And that’s what I mean by the word ‘patient experience.’”

He concluded the interview, saying, “I hope this book will serve as an occasion for us all to think beyond quality and consider what comes after that.”

Copyright © KBR Unauthorized reproduction, redistribution prohibited