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1.  Don’t get involved in patient billing or collections.  That is the job of the billing person (what?! You don’t have a billing person?  Get one, now!).  You don’t see medical doctors or dentists talking to their patients about “why didn’t you pay your bill last month?” or “Medicare won’t pay, so you have to.”  Discussing financial issues with patients damage the doctor-patient relationship, which should focus on health care.  If you talk about financial issues with a patient, it sends a mixed message:  “I want to provide you with excellent care, but I’m really more interested in making sure I get paid.”

2.  Don’t discuss appointments, missed appointments, late  appointments, walk-ins with patients.  Let your front desk person do it.  Figure out your policies, communicate them to the front desk person, then stay out of the way.  If you get involved in discussions about “I am too busy to see you now, but come back at the end of the day,” you destroy the credibility of the front desk person (no one will pay any attention to him/her because they know you’ll break the rules).  And don’t contradict the front desk person in front of a patient:  “It’s ok, Jennifer. I’ll see Mrs. Smith, just this once.”  Bad idea.

3.  Finally, don’t get involved in patient/employee, employee/employee disagreements.  In these cases, you will always lose.  Let people work things out on their own.  If the communication breaks down completely:

a.  In the case of a patient vs. an employee, you must support the employee.  If you don’t, you won’t have any employees left.  Set policies, stick to them (see #2 above), and support your employees as they deal with these policies.  If the policy is bad, change it, but don’t do it in front of a patient.

b.  In the case of employee/employee, you will never win trying to arbitrate.  If they feel you’re taking sides, both will resent you.  If they aren’t speaking to one another, tell them you’ll fire them both unless they agree to get along.  You’d be surprised how fast they can “make up.”

In all three of these situations, the presence of a policy/procedure before there is need for one (i.e., before the crisis happens) is vital.  Sit down before you start your practice and set out a policy manual, an employee benefits/office rules manual, and procedures for dealing with patient.  I have an ebook clled “The Practice Manual” on my website  that you can download, along with a template to fill in.

How would you handle these types of situations?

Date: Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 7:26 pm | Category: dealing with patients and employees, communication skills, building patient base | RSS Feed: RSS 2.0 feed.
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