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Understanding the Patient as Customer
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Your patients come from all walks of life - young and old, struggling and well to do, healthy and ill. But, at the risk of oversimplifying, there are two things they all have in common:
- They don’t want to have healthcare as an interruption in their lives; and
- If they must, they want to be treated as a person that matters.
Think about it. Every patient sitting in your waiting room, lying in your beds or on your treatment tables is living a moment of "life interrupted." For whatever reason they’re visiting you, with the exception of the planned physical or check-up, it’s a surprise (and not usually a pleasant one).
Whatever the situation, that person has had to interrupt whatever they were doing to take care of whatever concern has brought them to you. They come to you anxious and worried - not only about what’s wrong, but how they’re going to resolve it.
From your organization, they want a kind word, a smile, the confidence that you’ll take care of them or their loved one with the kind of care you’d expect for yourself. It sounds simple, but with every simple solution there are always complexities.
Look from the Outside in
Consider what you and your staff think about when you see another patient being admitted to the floor. "Oh, another emergency coming through the door," or "Here’s the fiftieth blood draw we’ve done for the day."
Are you thinking about what that patient must be feeling? Are you wondering what part of their life is "on hold" while they are with you? Are you curious about who is waiting for them to come home whole? Or, are you realistically thinking more about how you’re going to handle the workload?
Having these internal conversations - and putting yourself in the shoes of your patient customers and your staff - is a key part of getting the job done.
This shift in perspective, or thinking "outside in," comes from understanding that patients want to know that you have their best interests at heart. They want to know that you care about who they are and their concerns, and how they can return to a state of "normalcy" in their lives.
What you say and how you say it can make the difference between a patient saying, "I’ll never go there again," to "Wow, when I need healthcare, I’m not going anywhere else."
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