Listen to your patients

I was having dinner with a friend of mine yesterday, and she expressed the following frustration. Her urologist did a lab test on her and asked her to come back to the clinic to get her test result. She is a very busy woman and being confident that the test result is normal, she called the clinic and asked if they could give her the test results over the phone. No, they wouldn’t do it. They require her to make another trip and pay for another appointment for two minutes just to get her test. Does making extra few dollars really worth the loss of loyalty of your patients? Is that really an efficient way to run a small practice? There is always an urologist down the street who will gladly leave your result on a secure voicemail for you to access at any time. Just because you’ve always done things the same way, doesn’t mean that they work right. Listen to your patients, give them satisfaction surveys, ask for their feedback, and stay on top of new technologies in practice management. Be the kind of business, people want to switch to.

Add comment September 22nd, 2006