Medical Practice Staff and Patients

There was a book published several years ago by Jan Carlson of Scandinavia Airlines entitled “Moment of Truth”. Basically his point is that every time a customer comes in contact with a business a moment of truth is formed. These moments of truth create an impression which leads to thoughts about whether or not they should continue to seek products or services. Negative impressions will lead to the customer seeking other alternatives.

If we realistically look at the patient visit to the medical practice most “moments of truth” have to do with staff and the environment and NOT the provider. This is not to say that the provider portion of the visit is not important, it is the reason to be there, but it is to say that the staff needs to always be at their best.

So think about a few scenarios and how you respond:

• Patient yells – do you yell back or allow the patient to “vent”, listen and once the complaint is out, respond in a cool manner. Utilize the reflective/deflective listening approach which means you repeat what the patient said and attempt to reach common ground and a resolution of the issue. 
• Patient cries – they have just gotten bad news, time to empathize and recognize their need. 
• Use common language – it is noted that patients don’t understand medical terminology, make sure your discussion is in common language. 
• Pay attention – listen to what they have to say 
• Patient is late – offer them alternatives such as rescheduling or waiting to be worked in. We have done a good job of training patients, they expect us to be late so they can be late as well 
• We are so busy – instead of stating to obvious about a stressful day, don’t and try to calm down, relax and treat the patient with care and respect. Don’t let them know you’re too busy to see them – they’ll become stressed! 
• Treat them like you want to be treated – the golden rule 

Then make sure the reception area is clean, maintained at a comfortable temperature, includes entertainment such as wi-fi, TV, recent and relevant periodicals.

Patient satisfaction is one of the key metrics in Medicare and payer programs and plans, it is essential that we all do our part.

High Tech Creates Patient Inconvenience

A few weeks ago I had the misfortune of walking on a sidewalk and having a car jump the curb and hit me from behind. Fortunately, it was in a parking lot and the car was not traveling very fast and it was a knock down rather than a flight!

My wife drove me to a 24 hour free standing emergency room (affiliated with a local hospital – important later), the cost of the ambulance was vey high and I was not hurt that badly. The experience there was fine, seen timely, X-rays, staff handled paperwork and my personal needs very well. I am critical of these types of things, as you will see in other posts. Nothing broken so discharged home to rest.

Manage for Perfection

The final principle is to manage toward perfection. Here we can integrate both the prior four principles addressed as well as the concept of Six Sigma. Six Sigma refers to defects. A defect in your practice could be a medication error, the wrong size of gloves in the exam room, or something like that that is not correct.

To strive for perfection is to smooth out the flow and eliminate any defects that you may have.

As mentioned in the previous blog, you will have many days that are not efficient and you may get frustrated. You may want to stop reading this blog since it seems ideal and is not realistic. I hope you will stick with it. Your goal has been to improve patient care in any way possible. These tools discussed and more tools to follow will help. In addition, we will shift to more practical applications, experiences that the author has had as well as those from others who are willing to share with you what works.