Patient Satisfaction - What It Means For Your Medical Practice

It is common now to see slogans everywhere in business such as "Catch us at our best"

or "100% satisfaction guaranteed" and "Let us know how we are doing" which all signify customer service at its best. Providing good customer service begins with knowing what it is that you do well so that you can continue doing it and enhance those attributes that help you satisfy your patients.

You may say your medical office is not like a regular business and you would be right. Patients often stay with a medical practice even if they are dissatisfied with the service they are given mostly for the convenience which is uncommon for most businesses today. How long do you think that will last? However, currently the main reasons patients leave medical practices are:

There is an insurance change

Dissatisfaction with an aspect of their treatment

No follow up or recall connection

No medical concerns or illness to warrant a visit

Two of these items suggest that it is a practice's patient to lose. A patient's dissatisfaction with treatment could mean the treatment provided by the physician; or it could mean that a staff member mistreated them. Wouldn't you like to find that out? Not following up with patients is a common reason they get overlooked or disregarded and do not return. Most patients like to be contacted and reminded of their upcoming appointments or the need to schedule one. Correcting this one aspect alone could increase your medical practice income exponentially.

Other points of interest would be finding out why patients have left your practice, and what attraction keeps them coming back. If you do not know the answer to either one of these, then you will not be able to tweak your medical practice bottom line when you need it the most.

For example, let's say that your provider drops his contract with an insurance company or vice versa. It is important to know how to recover from any loss of revenue. This information will be vital when you know your patients, and what it is that keeps them coming back to you. You can be empowered by gathering information from your patients.

Begin by conducting an in-house patient survey or hire an outside contractor to conduct the survey for you. This will give you insight as to what you are doing well and what you could improve on to increase satisfaction with your patients. Capitalizing on the information that you gain from the survey will not only improve patient satisfaction, but will most likely increase patient referrals to your medical practice as well.

by: Rebecca Morehead

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