Of course doctors are not going to give in to everything a patient wants because they have a “customer” centered approach to their practice. But I think we can improve how health care is delivered if we take a customer service approach; especially in a private practice setting.

If a patient/customer dread coming to your office because the staff is not courteous, has to wait hours (without being informed as to why the long wait), or your office is too strict with policies, charges for every little thing if patients don’t comply with “practice” rules, then I think taking a customer service approach is a good thing.

And remember, happy patients not only strengthen the relationship between the patients and practice, it also helps improve on other things; like collecting patient balances, reducing bad word-of-mouth and potentially, malpractice claims.

I believe that taking a “customer” approach not only will it help us achieve efficient practice operations, but more important, provide patients with a remarkable experience when they visit your office.

We can do better than modeling ourselves after the players in a business transaction or the passive language of acute medicine. Living with a chronic disease takes far more effort than establishing a handful of business arrangements or just being informed of what the doctor thinks is best. We should look to the business language of partnership or affiliation rather than the language of the business transaction.

Who’s right in this case? Neither.

I try to schedule appts for the early morning and usually arrive at least ten minutes before the scheduled time. More often than not, I’m called back right away. The doctor gets a jump on his day and I don’t have to wait. Works for both of us.

Longest wait I ever faced was 90 minutes past the scheduled time. This was a post-op appt with a specialist and yes, I was angry. After that wait, he spent less than two minutes with me. As I left, the front desk apologized and commented that the surgeon was running behind because he’d brought his young daughter to work with him that day. Seems he’d just gotten back from a ski vacation and his wife had decided to spend a few more days on the mountain without the kid. IMHO, not a good reason to inconvenience your patients to such a degree. People were standing in the hall because they’d run out of room in the waiting room.

Most human interactions follow the same basic rule: you get what you give. Before you lambast your patients, who are paying you for your time (not vice-versa), think about how you treat them. Maybe they aren’t the problem.

It is the insurance industry (including Medicaid and Medicare) that interposes itself between the customer/patient and the physician – this adds to the complication of the interaction and results in worsened customer service.

I bring a good book or play games on my PDA and enjoy a little down time from my busy schedule.

“All they care about is their service. And, dammit, it’s never good enough.”

We patients are treated as consumers and you wonder why we act like consumers? I wish I had a warm caring relationship with my doctor-but what I get is customer service-”do you want fries with that?”

As I become a health care consumer instead of a patient, my trust for the medical profession is about the same as a car salesman.

Do what you think is medically appropriate. If the patients don’t like it, they can try to find another doctor, (or go to a “pseudo-doc” in-the-box place.) Plenty of others waiting to be seen that can fill out the schedule.