EHR: How difficult without the correct strategy

Why Satisfying Patients is Dysfunctional

2013-05-19T17:14:15Z

Technology creates trust among people who have never met. Individuals, grouped via the web into “smart mobs” are sharing and collaborating in ways hospitals cannot. The individual has transformed from being a passive consumer into one having the collective intelligence of a mob of educated collaborators Read More......(read more)

The Wildebeest Postulate of Patient Satisfaction

2013-05-14T22:00:11Z

The Kalahari; vast, silent, deadly. The end of the rainy season, the midday heat surpasses a hundred and twenty. One of the varieties of waterfowl, most notably the flame red flamingo that nested in the great salt pans in Botswana, has begun its annual migration. In the muck of one of the fresh-water Read More......(read more)

Will Showing Initiative Get you Voted Off The Island?

2013-05-14T00:31:17Z

Were one to judge America by what American’s read from scanning the headlines of the magazines in the supermarket’s checkout lane, the only items of note are that Jennifer Aniston may or may not be pregnant, and that another one of the Kardashian’s was married—no word as to whether or not she is pregnant Read More......(read more)

Patient Satisfaction: Defenseless in the Battle of Wits

2013-05-10T14:26:20Z

Yesterday I came close to being able to answer the question, just how many Raisinets can a person eat in one day. The Players Championship, the TPC, is being played in Jacksonville this week. My hotel is overflowing with men dressed like peacocks, and wearing golf costumes, outfits they would never wear Read More......(read more)

Patient Satisfaction: How Many Days Ago Was Sunday?

2013-05-09T15:13:52Z

How long have you been doing this? That’s seems like a fair question to ask of anyone in a clinical situation. It’s more easily answered when you are in someone’s office and are facing multiple framed and matted attestations of their skills. Seen any good Patient Satisfaction or retention certificates Read More......(read more)

Patient Satisfaction: When you are in a hole, stop digging

2013-05-08T19:25:45Z

I awoke this morning to a text message sent from my eleven year old son’s iPhone last night. The message read, “My two girdles are killing each other.” I was flummoxed until I spoke with my wife. It was two gerbils that were killing each other. Two gerbils, five dollars. Autocomplete, priceless. Having Read More......(read more)

The Downside of Patient Experience

2013-05-06T17:39:05Z

The Enchanted Forest was my first employer. My job was to direct cars to available parking, affix bumper stickers to those cars, and pick up the discarded Pampers—I lasted less than a day. I mention that because today I had the pleasure of laboring through security at Philadelphia International Airport Read More......(read more)

The Fallacy of Call Centers

2013-05-03T14:50:13Z

I am willing to bet that most contact centers are not providing value to the business. Most businesses score success around the metrics of the calls and the call center. The only business reason to have a call center is to increase the customer’s satisfaction. it costs $30 to process a call and Read More......(read more)

Patient Experience: Is it worse than your cable company?

2013-04-30T14:59:59Z

Several of you wrote to inquire about a term I used, churn. Customers churn, and patients churn. Churn is the opposite of retention. Instead of retaining patients, they churn, they go somewhere else. It’s like multiplying retention by negative one. I am curious to learn if any of us consistently has Read More......(read more)

Why not Improve Satisfaction Instead of Measuring it?

2013-04-27T15:38:43Z

One of the uncomfortable things about flying is how close you are to the other passengers. On my return flight from Florida I could see from his teeth that the passenger in the window seat must have had spinach for lunch. The most troubling part of my observation was that the passenger was in another Read More......(read more)

9% of Hospitals Have a Patient Satisfaction Plan

2013-04-25T16:27:07Z

The phone rang last fall. It was the school nurse asking me if I would pick up my seven year-old son. When I inquired as to the reason she informed me he delivered an organ recital—a long-winded recitation of ones ailments—the classic symptoms of the crud; tummy-ache, non-responsive, crying. She’s the Read More......(read more)

The Stilleto Theory of Improving Patient Satisfaction

2013-04-24T14:52:37Z

“I just returned from the Prada show in Milan”—that was the opening line from a piece on NPR. Apparently this year’s runaway hit on the runways has to do with high heels, with the emphasis on the notion of high. The following comes from the UK Telegraph: The girls looked like rabbits trapped in the headlights; Read More......(read more)

Patient satisfaction should be exclusive…to everyone

2013-04-22T13:39:29Z

Sometimes it feels like I fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down. Important: Do not remove the wires from your old thermostat until you have marked them with the enclosed labels. This warning was printed on a bright red background with yellow text and hidden away in the [.. Read More......(read more)

Patient Satisfaction: Still buying Data and Coaching, Why?

2013-04-20T17:49:35Z

Think about the answer to this question, how many nights have you spent in a hotel in the last decade? For most of us the answer is more than one hundred. How many nights have you spent in a hospital in the last decade? For most of us the answer is probably between none and [...] Read More......(read more)

Why your Website is Killing Patient Satisfaction

2013-04-16T17:03:23Z

Hospitals probably have more than one hundred points of contact with each patient. These points of contact (POCs) begin before the patient is admitted and continue after the patient has been discharged. The first contact may come by a visit to one of the hospital’s clinics, a 3 A.M. call to a primary Read More......(read more)