What Patients Can Teach You About Your Health Facility

– Contributed content –

(VA.gov)

16 Feb. 2019. In an ideal world, no patient would ever complain at your health care facility. You want to help people, after all, and every patient should leave with a smile on their faces. Sadly, as surgeries become more overwhelmed, this is happening less often. The majority of health care providers now have to deal with unhappy customers each day. That can be tough, and it’s an issue you probably want to nip in the bud as soon as you can.

Instead of seeing dissatisfied patients as a bad thing, though, it may be worth embracing them for the lessons they bring. To some extent, pleased patients don’t teach you much about where you can improve. Those who complaint, however, can give you a whole load of things to work on. That can make yours a better surgery in the long run, which we’re sure is a goal you would love to achieve.

Instead of blindly trying to avoid displeasure, then, listen to what your less-happy patients have to say. It may be that you go as far as to hire someone who’s completed an mba business intelligence and can analyze patient feedback for you. Or, you may get into the habit of making notes when patients do complain. Either way, paying attention could benefit you in the following ways.

Smoothing over general running issues

Issues in the running of health care are common. Most facilities now face long phone lines and convoluted booking processes. By paying attention to what your unhappy patients are saying, you stand to improve the way you run your practice no end. That’s because they’ll be able to highlight areas which proved problematic to them. If you received a lot of complaints about your booking systems, for instance, you would be able to find a new approach. In short; listening can smooth over the creases you would never have known about otherwise.

Addressing problems with patient-doctor interactions

While you should have some ideas about the running of your facility, you have less clue about patient-doctor relations. These are confidential meetings with people you’ve trusted to represent your surgery. There is a chance, though, that they have a poor bedside manner, or fail to listen to patients. And, you won’t know about that unless you get into the habit of listening to complaints. You would then be able to retrain or replace doctors who don’t serve your surgery well.

Your complaint policy

At the very least, dissatisfied customers can teach you about your complain policy. With the right plan in place, it’s possible to turn even negative experiences into positive ones. But, this is a policy you’ll never learn if you don’t need to implement it. The more you deal with dissatisfied patients, though, the better you’ll get at doing so. You’ll soon start to verse all new employees in how to handle complaints like these. This can ensure they stay calm and positive during even the worst complaints. That, in turn, can ensure a better service of quality for everybody.

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