OK, I’ll bite. What does this have to do with quality? My answer: Zero. Calling or visiting patients in the hospital is nice and warm-fuzzy, but from a risk management perspective the only reason to give an award for this is to hope that she won’t sue you if you neglected to badger her into getting a mammogram last year, and she now has cancer.

Most lawsuits involve 2 elements: an undesired outcome and a pissed off patient. Bad outcomes are inevitable. The best that a doctor can do is to keep her patients happy, and phone calls or hospital visits can go a long way toward that end. But don’t confuse that with quality care. Quality care involves using the best resources available to cure, relieve, prevent, or manage disease. It is disgusting to me that we get sued if we provide thoroughly high quality care, but it doesn’t work out right, and a perceived inappropriate comment, delayed visit, or billing snafu occurs. I do my best to satisfy every patient’s realistic expectation, but if I sense that I am not connecting with a patient and that the patient is not happy with the care given, I ask the patient to find another doctor. It only happens 2 or 3 times per year, and it’s an important part of my risk management program.