David Julian Martin, CAE
Chief Executive Officer/Executive Vice President
Society of Critical Care Medicine
Diane Scott
Customer Service Manager
Society of Critical Care Medicine
Providing You With the Right Care, Right Now
The Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) believes that providing patients the Right Care, Right NowTM is essential to good patient outcomes. At SCCM headquarters, our job is to help critical care providers deliver this high level of care. But be assured that we espouse the same Right Care, Right NowTM philosophy in the care we provide to you, our members and customers.
Like a top-performing intensive care unit (ICU) team, we work in cross-departmental teams to provide useful pro¬grams and tools (publications, multimedia products, conferences, guidelines, etc) to help critical care professionals provide optimal care. While we strive to provide you with the highest quality resources, we also place a strong empha¬sis on how we deliver information and services.
We take very seriously our responsibility for taking care of you and your professional needs. Our staff has you in mind throughout the workday. If the Society is creating a new conference, our program planning staff is thinking about the most useful content and tools as well as the most effective educational techniques. Our meeting logistics team is thinking about the best environment to deliver learning while keeping costs low. Our marketing colleagues are thinking about the information you need to make an informed decision about participating, and our customer service representatives are working hard to make the registration and housing process as easy as possible. In addition, the information technology staff is figuring out how to capture this information and make it accessible to those who will not be able to attend the event.
While we believe SCCM’s service levels are already high, we always strive to improve. In this issue’s column, we want to review our recently launched program enhance¬ments as well as those under way. All of these enhancements were suggested by members and program participants. Your feedback is important to us.
Recent Program Enhancements
The Fundamental Critical Care Support (FCCS) Course is an important program to train non-critical care profes¬sionals in the basic management principles of the first 24 hours of critical care. The program has worked well for large institutions holding multiple courses per year. However, because of the previous licensing structure, smaller hospitals that wanted to conduct single courses did not find it as easy to access. To address this, we instituted changes to the licensing structure, allowing for single-course licenses and more flexible pricing. This has contributed to the program’s exceptional growth during the first six months of this year. We also made changes to internal procedures, virtually eliminating delays in FCCS textbook shipment and certificate delivery. Upcoming enhancements include a wallet card and wall certificate combination and updated teaching materials and text.
The first years of practice are particularly challenging for an intensivist, and the educational and networking opportunities offered by the Society can be extremely beneficial. However, it is also a time when resources are limited, student loan bills are being paid and other expenses may mount. These challenges made it diffi¬cult for some physicians to maintain their membership after their training. We recently instituted a “Young Physician” membership category that reduced rates for physicians during their first three years after training. We have more than 500 new intensivists taking advantage of this membership category who now have access to all of the information and services SCCM offers during this crucial period.
Time is a valuable commodity for critical care professionals, making it difficult for them to get away from their units. The ICU must be covered adequately at all times, and hospital travel budgets can be tight. Unfortunately, this means some people who would like to attend the Society’s Critical Care Congress can’t get away for the entire meeting or perhaps can’t attend at all. To address this challenge, the Society developed a number of expanded educational opportunities and held them regionally to make access easier for you. Three years ago, we changed our registration policies so that full Congress registration is not required to attend the two-day Critical Care Refresher Course and Current Concepts in Pediatric Critical Care Course offered prior to Congress. In addition, we now offer some of our popular pre-Congress sessions during our growing lineup of smaller regional meetings. A number of popular Congress sessions are available on our Web site free of charge as part of our online learning library. Podcasts, offering an extensive and growing list of audio learning options, are available on the Web site as well as through Apple iTunes and other podcast applications. Throughout the year, members also receive complimentary educational materials in the form of monographs, highlight booklets and CD-ROMs.
New Online Services
Adapting new technologies is another key component of quality customer care. The Society has added several new online services, and you can look for many exciting Web site enhancements in the next few months.
During the past year, the Critical Care Forums were launched, providing you with an online network of colleagues with whom to discuss common issues and con¬cerns and to share solutions. We responded to your feedback about the number of emails you were receiving from SCCM by instituting a concise, semimonthly eNewsletter that contains important clinical and research information as well as information about SCCM activities. We launched the iCritical Care Podcasts, as noted above, and enhanced the SCCM Web site structure and navigational system, marking the first stage of an expanded SCCM Web pres¬ence set to roll out later this year.
Central to the new Web presence is the creation of a single sign-on portal page, called “MySCCM.” With MySCCM, users will log in only once to access all of the various activities provided via the Web. Currently, some members must recall up to one dozen different log-in codes and passwords to access all areas of our online activities, so this change will represent a significant improvement. Also, our number-one customer service complaint is difficulty in accessing the journals online. The new portal will solve this problem, as the log in will be managed by SCCM directly and not the publisher. Finally, you may customize the MySCCM portal to provide all of the key information important to you, making for a more efficient and effective experience. The new portal will feature a greatly enhanced search engine, which will permit you to search across multiple critical care Web sites for information you need. You will no longer have to search SCCM, the journals, the Critical
Care Forums and other resources separately to find information.
In addition to the MySCCM customized portal, look for the new LearnICU educational Web site and a new, separate patient and family-focused Web site. Both sites will contain enhanced materials that will offer better orga¬nization and accessibility of the Web site.
Customer-Focused Philosophy
While we work hard to identify your needs and imple¬ment the tools and programs required to fulfill them, it is important to emphasize our less tangible goal. We strive to enhance your experience with SCCM at every opportunity. We instill in our staff the desire to provide you with a positive experience at every interaction, whether it’s on the phone, in an email or in person. We follow the same motto as our critical care members: Learn It, Deliver It, Measure It, Improve It.
We educate staff about the importance of the customer experience and the many ways they can deliver optimal care to you. We measure customer satisfaction routinely through surveys, customer service inquiry logs and other means. We constantly look for ways to improve the ser¬vices we provide.
To help SCCM employees understand the challenges and rewards critical care professionals experience in their professional lives, they visit ICUs as part of their training. They spend time with members, doing their best to walk in their shoes for a few days. All levels of staff participate in this important program.
We believe these efforts enable our dedicated staff to provide you with the best possible experience. Working to support you is more than a job. We know that delivering you the best possible service helps you deliver high-qual¬ity care to critically ill and injured patients. Providing the Right Care, Right NowTM makes us all feel we are part of something important. Our jobs are transformed from a day at the office into a truly rewarding experience. At any time, please feel free to contact us with suggestions, ideas or concerns so that we can continue to enhance your SCCM experience. Thank you for all you do, and know that we are here to support you in your roles as caregivers for the most acutely ill and injured patients.
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