“Loyal patients return and they tell others about your practice because of relationship Relationship is every Doctor’s product and service. It’s the marriage you create when you open your own practice. Everyone knows that successful marriages take time to build relationship. Successful Doctors in Concierge Medicine understand patient loyalty comes with a price. That price is time spent in the relationship with the person or people sitting on the other side of the exam room. This graphic summary is first a lesson in cultivating a healthy healthcare practice culture and second, in customer service. A membership medicine model in most, if not all of its formations is a good thing for our communities and the future of healthcare innovation. And for the doubters, how different does or would this graph look in a today’s rushed, tedious and busy healthcare environment? My hunch is we all already know and unfortunately, we’ve all experienced it.” ~Editor, Michael T.
By Editor, Concierge Medicine Today
According to a study published in Medical Care, the average primary care exam is 18 minutes. It’s even more rare to find a Doctor and medical staff that will text you back — let alone in the same hour or even day.
That’s kind of sad when you think about. Let me be clear related to the graph below, this is a survey of one and not reflective or indicative of an industry. I do think it’s important though.
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The argument could be made among the naysayers first that there should be more Patient-to-Physician time. Sure, I’ll agree with that.
But in a culture in healthcare that’s fast-paced, infrequent and tedious, business models with Doctors operating in Concierge Medicine, direct practice environments and the like are a fantastic reflection in my opinion of great customer service.
Horst Schulz writes in his book Excellence Wins, “What business is not in the service business?”
I also think that this graph represents a healthy culture inside a medical office that’s often one of the businesses in our community that you rarely find happy, attentive and smiling employees.
I recently had the opportunity to hear author, speaker and customer experience coach Elizabeth Dixon share something with business leaders last month something that every Doctor should keep top-of-mind as well.
She said, “The customer experience will never be better than the employee experience.”
So for every Physician out there who struggles to make excuses for their staff, customer service errors and the like that statement of Elizabeth’s can be reframed for you to say … ‘The Patient experience [at your practice] will never be better than your employees experience!”
So in sharing my own personal experience in membership medicine with you in simplistic form (below), I totally agree there’s room for improvement. But, there’s also something beautiful happening in membership medicine, concierge medicine and models more direct that are to be celebrated.
