Meeting Research Study

MEETING RESEARCH STUDY SUMMARY
Studer Alliance for Health Care Research
Chris Meade, Ph.D.

Background and Introduction

Meetings dominate the way many companies do business today.  One study found that approximately 11 million meetings occur in the U.S. every day. Another found that most professionals attend a total of 61.8 meetings per month and other research indicates that over 50 percent of this meeting time is wasted.   Professionals attending these meetings admit to daydreaming (91%) and/or missing parts of meetings (95%).  A large percentage of meeting attendees (73%) say they have brought other work to meetings and 39% say they have dozed during meetings.   One firm revealed that 80 percent of their top management’s meeting time is occupied by issues accounting for less than 20 percent of the company’s long term value.    A group of psychology researchers found that perceived meeting effectiveness was found to have a strong, direct relationship with job attitudes and employee well-being. Given these facts and findings, it appears that companies would be well-served to improve the way they plan as well as conduct meetings.

The Studer Group’s work over the years with healthcare organizations and managers has led to similar conclusions, which were:

• There are too many meetings in hospitals.
• Hospital managers spend an excessive amount of time in meetings.
• Some of the meetings are not effective or valued. 

The premise for this study was that if training was done on effective meeting strategies,as well as how to implement them, healthcare organizations could reduce the number of meetings they schedule and ensure the meetings conducted are more effective.  Consequently, some hospitals currently in a contractual relationship with the Studer Group, agreed to participate in a study to determine if education can improve meeting effectiveness.

Study Objectives

• Quantify the amount of time managers and hospital employees spend in meetings and calculate a cost for the time spent in these meetings;
• Quantify the value and effectiveness of these meetings, based on the opinions of attendees;
• Track the effectiveness of the training tactics in reducing the amount of meetings, the time hospital employees spend in them, and increasing attendees’ opinions about the value and effectiveness of these meetings.

Sample and Research Method

A total of five hospitals agreed to participate in our study, but two were unable to complete the study.  The sample represents different entities within healthcare. They are:

• A 168 bed acute care hospital in Wisconsin.
• Two hospitals in the same system in Idaho with combined beds totaling 46.
• A critical access, 25 bed hospital in the Midwest.

All managers in these hospitals were asked to gather baseline data in meeting logs for four weeks on:

• The types of meetings they attend or call
• How much time they invest in them
• How many people attend as well as their opinions of the effectiveness and value.
• Meeting attendees also rate the meetings for effectiveness and value.

The logs took managers about 1-2 minutes to complete after each meeting they attended.

After the baseline data was gathered, managers went through a training session to learn how to make meetings more effective as well as to evaluate who should be attending these meetings.  One hospital’s training session was ‘live’ and conducted by a representative of the Studer Group.  The other four hospitals/clinics were given the same training session on a CD/DVD to minimize travel expenses.

After the training was completed, the hospitals were asked to repeat the same data collection on meetings for another four weeks after the organization started implementing these new strategies.  The new set of data was compared to the baseline to determine if the meeting training impacted the group.

Key Findings Summary

• As a result of the training and strategies introduced, the findings indicate that fewer meetings occurred, less time was spent in meetings by managers, and fewer ‘other’ staff members were invited in the post-training period. 

• The three hospitals completing the study had an aggregated total of 1,767 meetings in four weeks in the baseline period.  As a result of the training provided, they reduced the number of meetings by 21% to 1,401 over a four-week period.

• This reduction resulted in a savings of $15,635 in managers’ time not spent attending meetings and a savings of $144,615 in ‘other’ employees’ time not spent attending meetings.  This is a total savings of $160,250 in one month for only three hospitals!  The figures reveal to us that undoubtedly, the most costly component of meetings is the people managers invite to attend.

• Managers’ and attendees’ perceptions of the value and effectiveness of the meetings increased after the training.  All of the increases were statistically significant, which implies the training was the factor making the difference.  The averages aggregated for all three hospitals were compared statistically using an independent samples T-Test.  The table below reveals the results.

The results for the individual hospitals are summarized on pages 4-6. 

Additionally, there is a calculator that can be used online to measure the dollar amounts organizations are spending for their meetings.  It can be accessed at:
www.effectivemeetings.com/diversions/exe/costcounter.exe

Hospital #1- 168 Bed Acute Care Hospital.  Total discharges of 9,828 and revenue of $211 million.

*Note: managers were asked to report meeting time in minutes for accuracy purposes; it was then converted to hours.
**Note: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates the median salary of a hospital and health services manager at $67,430 annually. Cost was calculated by taking $67,430/2080 to get the average hourly rate of $32.42 and multiplying by the number of hours.
***Note: Using data from the BLS an average of $20/hour was calculated for health care occupational workers.  The cost per hour was calculated by multiplying $20 by the number of hours ‘others’ spent in meetings.

 Hospital #2-25 bed Critical Access Facility. Total discharges of 618 and patient revenue of 23 million.

*Note: managers were asked to report meeting time in minutes for accuracy purposes; it was then converted to hours.
**Note: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates the median salary of a hospital and health services manager at $67,430 annually. Cost was calculated by taking $67,430/2080 to get the average hourly rate of $32.42 and multiplying by the number of hours.
***Note: Using data from the BLS an average of $20/hour was calculated for health care occupational workers.  The cost per hour was calculated by multiplying $20 by the number of hours ‘others’ spent in meetings.

Hospital #3- Two Hospital System in Idaho-47 patient beds and revenue of $32 million

*Note: managers were asked to report meeting time in minutes for accuracy purposes; it was then converted to hours.
**Note: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates the median salary of a hospital and health services manager at $67,430 annually. Cost was calculated by taking $67,430/2080 to get the average hourly rate of $32.42 and multiplying by the number of hours.
***Note: Using data from the BLS an average of $20/hour was calculated for health care occupational workers.  The cost per hour was calculated by multiplying $20 by the number of hours ‘others’ spent in meetings.