The Outrageous is not a familiar event in the healthcare arena, but don’t tell that to Sally Grady, Director of Imaging Services at Florida Hospital’s Seaside Imaging Center. Sally insists ‘there was not a creative bone in her body’ when she first arrived from Ohio to the town of Celebration back in 1996. The fact that the Florida Hospital where she would be working was only 2 miles from The Magic Kingdom should have been her first clue that this hospital was built to be different than the norm. She was challenged (often and still) by the CEO: how can you make the Imaging Department different? The CT scans and MRI’s have a larger than life presence where technology and fear do battle with every patient that needs to show up, no matter what their age. There are so many patients and never enough time, so an assembly line mentality prevailed. Patients chose to cancel their appointments more often than not, and when they did show up, sedation was the usual solution to quiet the fear.
At first, Sally ‘didn’t get it.’ Fortunately, she had been a fan of Walt Disney for years. She studied his winning formula to affect all the senses in creating a total immersion into the experiential for the patient. She was determined to deliver the unexpected using high-touch in a high-tech environment. ‘Everyone has a story about the beach,’ Sally says. ‘Building sandcastles at the water’s edge, squishing your toes in the sand…what could be a better environment than that?’
She challenged her vendors to design fun equipment. ‘Patients expect good equipment,’ Sally says emphatically, ‘but when I challenged our vendors to create a CT Scan that looks more like a sandcastle instead of a techno-monster, the bar was raised like never before.’ She had to do her own fundraising for this project, too, looking for different partners to deliver this outrageous Vision. And, deliver this Vision she did…in full out living color!
The Florida Hospital Seaside Imaging Canter today embodies an entire virtual beach environment! Instead of carpet, Sally put down a boardwalk. Sitting in colorful Adirondack chairs in the pre-exam area of the MRI Island, the Lighthouse sits center-stage. Max and Buddy, Seaside’s signature bear characters, come alive in 3D on the surrounding walls, engaging patients in educational (bear facts) videos that are like ‘coming attractions’ to what happens next. Generic changing rooms now look like beach cabanas, and instead of backless paper-like scratchy ‘gowns’, patients wear surfer shorts and tees, with flip flops, of course. They hear ocean waves and birds flying high. They smell coconut oil in the air, and, best of all, technology, like that big CT scanner, is transformed, into a sandcastle that rivals Cinderella’s. Barium is served straight up, in a turquoise glass with a purple umbrella, looking more like a martini or a Shirley Temple than what we know it really is. Imagination is a given here at Seaside, so patients of all ages surrender to the ride. We’re talking a huge WOW factor here!
‘We know this isn’t an amusement park. We’re here for something serious,’ Sally says. Patients respond. They relax and even have fun getting an MRI exam! The cancellation rate has dropped 50%. The sedation rate, which adds to the expense of the procedure, has gone down from 6% to 2%. Sally Grady might say ‘there isn’t a creative bone in my body,’ but in my eyes, she is my hero: a woman who had the courage to bring outrageous to a place where it was least expected. Sally Grady is a healer extraordinaire…and if Sally can bring this kind of magic to a hospital where life and death battle it out in every moment, what can YOU bring to your world??? The Outrageous must be calling your name….
