Editor’s Note Carol Murphy, Executive Editor

Have you ever encountered travel delays that resulted in arriving at a hotel during the wee morning hours? On a trip to Chicago last year, after discovering the airline lost my luggage, I found myself trying to check in to a hotel at 3 a.m. and was informed I’d have to wait until 6 a.m. to obtain a room.

Last year, Cornell University’s renowned School of Hotel Administration dubbed Ali Kasikci, The Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel’s General Manager “Overall Best Practice Champion” among hotel general managers throughout the U.S. To be sure, being part of the luxurious Peninsula hotel chain, not to mention being located in star-studded Beverly Hills, CA, Kasikci’s hotel has plenty of resources to invest. But he won the award for an innovation that he says didn’t cost a dime: a 24-hour-a-day-check-in policy.

Sounds very simple, doesn’t it—offering a 24-hour check-in but oddly it was innovative enough to win Kasikci an award. Kasikci, a 20-year veteran of the hospitality industry, says he decided to offer the 24-hour check-in as a result of a huge void in the hotel industry from people being inflexible.

So how much did Kasikci’s system change cost in terms of new staffing and computer systems? Zero! Kasikci says it was primarily just record keeping that was modified.

What policies or procedures in your practice could be radically improved with fine-tuning? This month, we’ve tried to give you a bit of insight into specific problems and hopefully some solutions to frequent challenges within practices today.

Jim Ferrell, President of the Anaheim Group, shares some interesting revelations about patient satisfaction gleaned from recent surveys he has conducted for some practices. You’ll probably be surprised with the number one complaint patients from these offices expressed…and no, it’s not the fees!

As you read this issue remember the key to sustainable success is not necessarily coming up with brand new concepts, sometimes it’s simply the ‘little things’ that can make an unbelievable difference.