T. Scott Gross

When we first moved to the Texas hill country we went looking for a family doctor and were repeatedly referred to Doc Jim a D.O. doing business in the small town of Comfort, working from a tiny office right on the main drag. Jim could fix you up right now and only get to the money as an after thought. He left me waiting one morning as he sewed up the near-severed finger of a toddler. The conversation seeping through the exam room wall was mostly Spanish. I understood most of the Spanish and all of the tears.

The worried parents had no insurance and no money but they negotiated for yard work in the summer and homemade tamales at the holidays.

As luck would have it I was in the office again when the tiny family returned for a follow up. The finger, like the rest of the child, was warm and pink. A good sign.

“I didn’t get into this for the money,” Doc Jim had a penchant for the obvious. One look around the office told the story. I think about the time I had to remove chainsaw parts from the exam table or the time Doc Jim showed up at the scene of an MVA I was working as an EMT. He was sporting a full white beard grown especially for the annual stock show. He wore a beat-up straw cowboy hat to compliment grass stained athletic shoes. But pretty or not I was glad to see him. And of course there were those few times when I called him at home on a weekend or in the middle of the night. He never said more than, “I’ll meet you at the office.”

That’s the way healthcare was meant to be.

No, we’re not saying you should post your personal phone number on a billboard. But there may be a middle ground that lies somewhere between routing all calls to an answering service and not having a life.

We’re going to give you a few simple tools for restoring healthcare to the way it was meant to be. We’re also going to give you permission to use them!

We’re going to give you a positively outrageous Service Prescription! Come on, open wide… this is going to make it all better.

Once upon a time… we owned a restaurant. To say that we were doing miserably would be painting a picture that was way too optimistic. We were losing our backsides, going to hell in that proverbial handcart, failing big time. But the oddest thing was that we were doing, according to the experts, everything right.

Our location was the best. Our food was exceptional. Our prices were fair and our operation was squeaky clean.

Customers stayed away in droves.

We were in a sink or swim situation and I was forced into my natural, geeky, back-up style… Mr. Science. I did what good scientists often do: parallel analysis. So you don’t have to suffer: parallel analysis is the act of looking for similar situations in dissimilar industries to see if the way they solved their problem might be adapted or adopted as a solution to yours. Whew! ‘Sorry about that.

Our observations became notes, our notes became principles, and our principles came to be known as Positively Outrageous Service or POS for short. POS was defined as:

• Random and unexpected
• Out of proportion to the circumstance
• Customer is highly involved
• Creates positive, compelling word of mouth

If you look at the definition closely you’ll realize that what we call POS is exactly what great docs and caring staff do instinctively. But the geek in me knows that good science is repeatable science and a good definition helps us do what we know in our heart with intention and purpose. It also serves as a model for folks who want to reach out but don’t quite feel comfortable. It’s the answer to the question: do we shake hands or hug?

So we offer our positively outrageous Service Prescription:

• Often highly personal. Always involving
• Of the moment, from the heart… (Neither requested nor expected)
• A form of unconditional love
• Creates compelling, positive word of mouth

One nice thing about the Service Prescription is that you needn’t be a medical expert to practice this piece of medicine.

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