Medical Entities Need To Improve Their Customer Service Skills

Two weeks ago, I had to “pull rank’ on someone who was working in a physician’s billing office. This one person kept calling my mother and telling her that she had to contact an insurance carrier on the physician’s behalf because the insurance carrier was incorrectly paying on my mother’s account. The major problem, however, is that Mom had told them not to bill this particular insurance, and her account was being overpaid, thus the issue wasn’t Mom’s, but theirs.

Mom got frustrated after the second call and called me. I was irritated because, back in September when my mother was having some other issues, their office wasn’t giving me satisfaction, so I wasn’t feeling a lot of love for any of them. I got the phone number from Mom and gave this woman a call.

The woman started to tell me the same thing she was telling my mother, but at one point she slipped and said something I knew was incorrect. I stopped her immediately, told her what I did, told her how long I’d been doing it, and proceeded to tell her that she was incorrect in her information. She was wrong on a lot of things, and I knew she was parroting what she’d heard. I wasn’t mad, but I was forceful. I told her my mother wasn’t calling anyone because it wasn’t her issue. If Mom’s account was being underpaid, that’s one thing. But my mother had told her office what not to do, they were doing it anyway, and it was their problem, period. I asked if she understood where I was coming from. She said yes, but that Mom’s accounts would continue being messed up. I reiterated that their accounts being messed up was their issue, not my mother’s, and no one had better call her again on this matter.

Then a couple of days ago, I was talking to a friend of mine in another state. She had to do something similar for her mother, only it was for a medical procedure. Her mother had received a phone call saying she had to go to the hospital for some kind of scan. They didn’t tell her mother what kind of scan, or what the scan was for. My friend called the physician’s office multiple times and left a message, but no one ever called her back.

A day before the scan, my friend finally got through to someone and pretty much lambasted them. She asked why her mother was going for a scan, and the person basically started reading words from the medical record. My friend has only ever done billing, so she told the woman to break down the technical jargon and tell her what it meant in layman’s terms. When the woman told her my friend asked why no one had told her mother this; the woman said she didn’t know.

The next day, my friend and her mother showed up at the hospital for the scan. When the woman came out to do the scan, my friend asked her if anyone from the hospital had tried to call her mother about the scan. The woman said yes, to schedule the scan. She asked if anyone had told her mother what the scan was for; the woman said she didn’t know. It turns out that no one at either place had ever told my friend’s mother why she was having the scan. My friend told the woman to tell her mother what the scan was for, and she proceeded to read from the medical record; seems to be a pattern here. My friend stopped her and told her to break it down into terms most people would know, adn she did. When she was finished, my friend asked her mother if she had ever been told she had a problem, which is somewhat serious.

Then she asked the woman why no one had ever told her mother about this issue, and why they hadn’t sent her to a cardiologist. The woman said the doctor wanted to monitor things instead; the woman isn’t a heart specialist. So my friend basically told people off, asked about lab test and other things in the medical record, saying no one had ever informed her or her mother of any results from any tests, and how dare they play with her mother’s life in this fashion. Then she sent her mother for the test, which was pretty crucial based on the new information.

Medical people have different thoughts on what customer service is all about. Most of them feel if they’re nice to their patients and can get to them relatively close to when they’re supposed to see them, based on the time of the appointment, that they’re giving great customer service. This pretty much means that both hospitals and physician’s offices are failing all the time. I’d have to say that the office of one of my physician’s is pretty much the same. I never get informed of what my test results are unless I ask ahead of time, and that’s not supposed to be something I have to do. Sure, they’ll call you if you’re close to dying, or very sick, but if you’re starting to show some negative signs they’ll make the decision for you on how critical it is and leave you hanging. How many of you want to know if there’s a potential problem that maybe you can work on?

Of course I’m picking on health care, but think about how this might work in other businesses and ask yourself if your customer service practices are as customer friendly and proactive as they should be. It can only strengthen your overall business and give your customers a more pleasant experience.