Practicing patients

Professionals see patients at their practice, but is it professional to make patients practice patience? It is too well known that an appointment set for 2pm with a healthcare professional means that they expect you to show up early so you won’t miss your appointment, and then wait for 20 to 60 minutes before you are actually seen. This is such a common practice that it is accepted as the norm—as if the time and priorities of patients have little worth.

Doctors and dentist will purposefully over-schedule appointments to maximize their time. That way, if someone cancels their appointment, the doctor will still have an uninterrupted stream of patients and cash flow. However, this can create a backlog if everyone decides to show up at their scheduled time.

Customer service is something that every professional and his or her practice should have as a top priority, and it includes more than seeing patients on time. Because we have a large family, it is more convenient to see the dentist all at once, rather than scatter the appointments on different days. After waiting for several weeks to schedule one day when everyone could be seen, we were disappointed to learn that one of our daughters was not on the schedule and the only opening was one month later—that’s one bad mark on their overall satisfaction score. Not all of the family could be seen before their lunch break because they were behind on their schedule, so they made another one of our children reschedule one month later also—they’re up to two marks now.

In addition, Rik’s records were lost, even though this was his fourth visit. He had to fill out new paperwork and none of his x-rays were available—three marks. While in the waiting room, he spoke to someone who had been seen a week earlier by a dentist at another dental clinic. The tooth was still giving her problems, and when she was asked why she did not go to the same dentist, she replied that she did not want to go back because the dentist passed out on her after reaching down to get something. The patient was in shock as the staff frantically reacted to the incident. Just before they were getting ready to call 911, he regained consciousness, and summarily told her that it had happened before. Then he continued working on her like nothing happened. She was very uncomfortable and refused to go back to him to have the problem corrected (no marks because it was another dentist and clinic, but it did not create a warm fuzzy feeling about seeing dentists).

Scheduling problems are a minor irritant compared with more serious issue dealing with cleanliness. A few days after being seen by the dentist, Janel experienced sores on her lip and the inside of her mouth—four marks on the negative side. The suspicion that it was due to unsanitary instruments or procedures was confirmed when our two children who had to wait a month also experienced sores inside their mouth where the instruments touched their tongue and the inside of their cheek within a day after going to the same dental clinic—five bad marks, and time to look for a new dental clinic.

A study by a Northwestern Memorial Hospital doctor estimates that 1 percent of all U.S. patients suffer staph infection. This is about 300,000 people per year. Four percent of those people will become inpatient deaths in the United States—nearly 12,000 people (230 per week). That’s equivalent to a Boeing 747 jumbo jet going down every other week and killing every person onboard. If that happened, it would make major news headlines, and shut down the airline industry—yet the same number of people dying in hospitals from infection is hardly given any notice.

A clean, comfortable environment is the minimum expectation when visiting any organization. With most businesses, one does not worry about leaving the establishment alive. Respecting your time is an added bonus that is rarely practiced by not only doctors, but also by repair people, banks, and anyplace that expects you to wait in line for service. Researcher Paco Underhill believes that waiting time may be the single most important factor when it comes to customer satisfaction. If customers are required to wait in line too long, their impression of overall service drops drastically. Maybe that’s why professionals call their customers patients, because they need a lot of it when they make a visit; and why the doctor’s business is called a practice, because they are still working to get it right.

Even though waiting is a major pet peeve of customers; it is a problem that can be remedied by improving operations and staffing. Supermarkets will open additional cashiers when more than two customers are in line, and a good fastfood restaurant will have your food ready within a couple of minutes. Are there ways that you can give your customers, clients, guests, or patients faster service than they expect? Just this one improvement will greatly boost the impression your customers have of your professionalism and keep those bad marks from being mentally noted.

(Rik is a business instructor at NMC and Janel is the owner of Positively Outrageous Results. They can be contacted at: biz_results@yahoo.com)