How to Handle Patient Complaints?
The healthcare industry is built around the patients. Therefore, whether it is a hospital, practice, or any healthcare unit, the patient complaints really matter every single time. Though the practices of now are equipped with the best doctors and cutting-edge facilities to help them address all of the patients' ailments, patient-centricity is something that many of the practices still lack today.
Around 81% of the patients today are dissatisfied with the healthcare experience they receive from the practices, according to the latest survey. These dissatisfied patients would never sit and waste their time with the same practice. With the emergence of digitalization, the opportunities for healthcare practices to grow as startups have increased evidently. This would result in the patients' switching their providers at the very hint of better experiences.
The availability of online benefits stands as a prominent cause for the patients switching their providers, as per recent surveys. Over 59% of the Gen Y patients are of the opinion that they would need to switch their doctors and healthcare practices to get connected with one such provider that has better online access.
Patient complaints in healthcare and why they must be addressed!
Patient complaints in healthcare are of several types. The patients often complain about several aspects of a hospital or a healthcare unit. Some of the patient complaints examples include the complaints they have against the doctors who diagnose them, their behavior, the costs, the overall transparency of healthcare, lack of an online approach, and more, and most of the practices just leave them be. This attitude can result in severe consequences for the healthcare provider and can even lead to the patients leaving the particular healthcare practice.
If you are wondering why the parents complain against the healthcare service provider, then here is a list of obvious reasons for the patient complaints in healthcare:
Incompetent doctors/physicians
Doctors and physicians who are entitled to treat the patients are often the ones bearing the brunt of the patients. However, in many cases, it is discovered that the practices are rooting for inexperienced medical practitioners whom they are housing at cheap rates to treat the patients. This is often resulting in wrong treatments, growing tensions, and adding to the list of patient complaints. So, the practices must reach out to experienced medical professionals for their practices. This will not only decrease the total time wasted for the patients but also help in treating them well, thereby reducing any other hassles involved in it.
Billing issues
Billing issues are not unknown to the healthcare industry. In fact, recent reports confirm that around 80% of the medical bills are erroneously calculated. Now, in this case, the healthcare practices lose regardless of whether the billed amount is a case of underbilling or overbilling. Where in the former instance, the practice stands a chance of losing out on its revenues, the latter case of overbilling is shameful for the practices and also leaves a mark on the brand image as well. As most of such issues have emerged due to the manual billing process, it is really high time for medical practices to switch to online billing methods by embracing the latest billing software for the medical offices from trustworthy service providers like GrowPractice.
Lack of online facilities
Digital is the call of the age. This is why online facilities are something very important in our lives. It has been proven time and again that digital methods are more efficient and cost-effective than the previous methods. Besides, digital practices also significantly contribute to saving the total time even in the healthcare industry. Research says that around 78.8% of the patients would rather go for a secure online method when it comes to accessing their medical histories sharing information with their doctors.
Disorganized service
Service matters regardless of the type and location of the business, and this is the same even for the healthcare industry where the practices need to serve the customers in the best way possible. Offering a proper healthcare service includes good behavior from the staff and doctors, coordinated workflow, timely patient check-in, and intake processes, and ultimately extending all the services in an organized manner. The lack of order in a healthcare practice is a huge cause of concern for the patients too, who often complain of the same and can even go to the extent of leaving a particular practice too.
Lack of trained medical staff
The healthcare industry is one of such industries where experience counts, simply because the life and the well-being of tens of thousands of patients are associated with it. Therefore, inexperienced medical staffs are a strict no-no when it comes to healthcare practice. Medical staffs are significantly reducing in number. Around 1 in every 5 healthcare workers have left their professions since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. All of these make the lack of healthcare workers a palpable problem, which the practices need to dodge by implementing cutting-edge medical software and tools from reliable medical office software providers like GrowPractice.
Long wait times
The patients often complain of the rising wait times. Over 80% of such patients think that the wait time they experience is a crucial parameter upon which the overall patient experience depends, thereby making it one of the major causes of patient complaints in healthcare.
Lack of transparency in costs and services
Healthcare services are becoming more costly each day the more. However, it is even more important to note that these services are not really quite transparent. In fact, a rising trend is noticed of the patient complaints about doctors and the healthcare workers who fail to inform them about the cost of the healthcare services. Around 65% of the patients consider the transparency in the cost of the healthcare services as a critical factor that contributes to the patient experience and the overall rate of patient satisfaction.
Now that you are thorough with the main causes of the patient complaints in healthcare along with some interesting patient complaints examples, you should now be more careful about receiving these types of patient complaints. However, knowingly or unknowingly you would also have to face patients' complaints and address them appropriately.
A list of the best ways for managing patient complaints and grievances!
Complaints and grievances always give nightmares to the companies and managing patient complaints and grievances in the healthcare industry sound to be more of a challenging task. However, if you are informed of the complaints, track the patient surveys and feedback and act accordingly to deliver the service they want, then you would not have a hard time managing patient complaints and grievances for your practice. So, if you are looking for some of the proven ways to tackle patient complaints in healthcare practices, then don't worry because we will discuss some proven hacks that you can use to handle patient complaints. However, first, let us see what else can you do to minimize the patient complaints about doctors. Here's the list of the best ways via which you can use reduce patient complaints and grievances. Check them out below:
Go Online
The patients love the digital way of life they are leading now. The online methods are much more efficient and involve fewer hassles than the earlier manual methods. The online tools and software are thus used in almost all of the industries of now and are really relied upon even in the healthcare industry. From the patient appointment bookings to the payment process and following them up, everything is rapidly turning online with less room for encouragement for the earlier practices. Besides, the online methods are what the patients absolutely love. More than 68% of the patients claim that they would rather go for a practice that offers online appointment bookings, changing and canceling methods for the patients. Going online, thus, would be an effective way to reduce patient complaints!
Make the overall process transparent
Transparency is something that the healthcare industry should really be concerned about. The healthcare sector deals with patients and human lives and thus, it has a considerable amount of emotional quotient involved in it. This further brings up the importance of transparency in the healthcare ecosystem. Around 65% of the patients think that transparency in the cost involved in the healthcare services is a crucial need for them. Transparency is thus one of the primary things that healthcare practices need to extend their patients.
A desk that will confirm the charges on an upfront basis and another department is something huge that will help reduce the patients' complaints massively. One other thing is the transparency involved in confirming the wait time. The wait time involved in a case stands crucial for the patients and at least 84% of the patients think so. However, informing the patients of their wait times upfront will certainly help the practices be more transparent for the patients. The reduction of the wait times of the patients is further possible with GrowPractice's faster medical office software and efficient patient management and practice management systems.
Improve workflow
Workflow is really very important when it comes to the healthcare industry and for practices. This workflow helps the practices stay efficient to every patient they see and find all of the physical and mental problems they are diagnosed with and their remedies without bothering the patients much. With a lack of proper workflow, the patients get irate and they suffer much. However, GrowPractice would never have your practice go out of the workflow that the patients need. The leading medical office solutions provider helps the practices get an optimum workflow by helping them customize their own workflows for their patients. This is really unique and extremely helpful in reducing patient complaints.
Make the billing process error-free
Reports reveal that the healthcare industry sees a majority (80%) of its bills spiked with errors. These errors definitely cost the healthcare industry dearly. The mistakes found on the healthcare bills cost $68 annually. All of these are reasons enough as to why the practices need to focus on their billing process and make the same error-free. The manual billing processes earlier were prone to several errors along with being lengthy and chaotic. However, the digital way of billing, with the help of the trusted billing software from GrowPractice, can drastically reduce patient complaints in healthcare.
Engage the patients
Though patient-centricity is the motto of every other healthcare service provider, a vast majority of the practices lack proper patient engagement. Lack of patient engagement is one of the main types of patient complaints that are seen today. It is the patients centering who are the healthcare organizations and practices built, therefore the patients should get the most attention. Engaging the patients can be difficult but is not impossible. Some of the effective hacks to engage the patients efficiently in a practice would be to:
Reduce the wait times
Reducing the wait times has always been challenging for healthcare practices. The patient wait times are literally terrible for the patients. 43% of them deems the wait times they experience while visiting a doctor or a clinic is the most frustrating part of visiting a doctor. Therefore, a reduction of the patient wait time is essential for the practices, which will significantly help them in managing patient complaints and grievances.
Monitor patient feedback through online surveys
It has been recently found out via surveys that an impressive majority of 94% of the patients rely on online reviews before visiting a healthcare provider. It has also been lately discovered that it takes around 1-6 for the patients to form an opinion on a particular provider that they see on the internet. All of these reveal that the patient feedbacks and reviews are really important and it is next on them that the practices need to focus.
Patient feedback and online patient surveys lead to astonishing results and ultimately help the practices measure the overall satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the patients and their rates. Such feedback and surveys, if conducted wisely and with the help of reliable providers like GrowPractice, would certainly go a long way to help the practices understand the patient complaints and grievances and fix them duly.
It is true that there are several types of patient complaints. Besides, the patients can have issues with the practices and their departments as well as with the doctors that practice there. Most of these complaints that the patients have can be addressed by focusing on all of the above-mentioned points that we have listed in the earlier section. Now, if you are still wondering how you can further minimize or handle patient complaints yourself, then here are some easy hacks that you can follow:
Now, this list of practices would certainly help your practice reduce the patient complaints but how would you actually handle the patient complaints if they start complaining against your practice?
As far as the complaints are concerned, they need to be addressed appropriately depending on their severity of them. However, if it is a generic complaint from the patients, then you need to deal with the same care in order to refrain from hurting the patient and improving the overall crisis management of the brand. Here are the things that you can try after you have received patient complaints online:
With this being said, it would be less than easy to handle the patient complaints, especially when GrowPractice is by your side.
GrowPractice is Actively Reducing Patient Complaints in Healthcare
Over 81% of the patients are detected as dissatisfied with their healthcare providers, and these numbers are increasing regularly. Here, if Growpractice emerges as the best office solutions provider for the practices with some unique approaches that are presently helping in handling patient complaints and minimizing, then the patient complaints about doctors and practices would significantly decline.
GrowPractice has already assumed a big role in bringing close to a revolution in the healthcare industry. The leading medical, practice and patient management software provider is trusted by numerous practices today along with several US Federal Government Agencies, which is significantly reducing the patient complaints that the practice sees today. Along with this, GrowPractice also focuses on increasing the rate of repeat patients and patient retention, which has grown by 48% for the practices. Furthermore, it has also boosted the patient satisfaction rating by 97% in the practices.
Handling patient complaints can seem to be tough for the practices today, but with GrowPractice's innovative strategies that are complete with medical office software and solutions, the patient complaints would be perfectly addressed, thereby ushering an ideal workflow in a practice.
