How Customer Service Can Improve Patient Outcomes

Healthcare is not the same today as it once was. Now more than ever before healthcare organizations are facing more and more pressure to improve patient outcomes. Not just because of value-based purchasing and Pay for Performance, but also because of increased competition in the healthcare space.  When discussing ways to enhance patient outcomes, we often focus on optimizing treatment planning, reducing clinical errors, and enhancing EHR systems. However, another major factor in patient outcomes is customer service.

Unnecessary Errors

 Customer service isn’t just about how we talk to patients. It is how we SERVE our patients. Take the check-in process for instance: It is easy for the front office staff to just simply “check-in” a patient. But going the extra mile just to double check and ask if any of their information (address, billing, insurance, etc.) has changed can help make sure that the contact information for the patient in the system is accurate. This translates into every part of the patient experience. There are many errors and mistakes that could be avoided if staff would simply ask or double check.  And it isn’t just about asking questions either. When we hand-off patients to other staff, taking the time to correctly communicate information to them is not always a priority and details get missed. Often when being discharged, patients aren’t even given all the information they should have: things to avoid, warning signs, additional symptoms to look for, side effects, etc. Give it in a written format so they can reference it. This missed communication can have a huge impact on the patient outcome. More importantly though, it is easily avoidable when the culture of the clinic or hospital is centered around making sure the patients have the best experience possible. When you care that the patient has the best experience, you care that they know what to expect, and inform them of everything throughout their care process instead of just rushing them through the clinic until you can check them out.

Finding the Missing Pieces

 When we are focused on the patient experience and we have accountability for customer service in the clinic, we can find where our customer service skills are lacking and see how we can improve patient satisfaction. This is important now more than ever, as legislation has established patient satisfaction as a legitimate measurement to determine performance, and because our customer service also affects the other factors governed though HCAHPS scores (efficiency, cost-reduction, safety and actual clinical care).  Another benefit to customer service training and accountability is that when we hold our staff to a higher standard and create a clinic culture centered around the patients, we are able to find other non-customer service related issues simply because we are looking at everything with a desire to care not just for, but also caring about the patient. We can catch issues with data entry into our EHR systems, issues with processes and even mistakes in best-practices.

When healthcare clinics and systems take the initiative to provide the best customer service training and accountability to their staff, they have found that the benefits reach much deeper than just patient satisfaction and the patient experience; it has a direct impact on the day to day operations of their facilities and every component of the patient care process. 

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Be the nurse you would want as a patient

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