Non-Clinical Support » Practice Management

Patient Relationship Management (PRM)

Who is a nice patient?

A "nice patient" is one who does not complain

• When we answer 4-5 phone calls during the time he has got after an hour's wait
• When our body language says that we have lost interest in his chronic complaint
• When we check his BP / take temperature second time in 5 minutes as we do not remember the first reading

Do we need such a 'nice' patient and will we be lucky to get such patients?
No! We do not need such a 'nice' patient as such a 'nice' patient will not come back! He would have realized whatever care and compassion he had expected / seen in us is not there/ long gone.

A study done in UK of dissatisfied patients revealed that of the dissatisfied, only 4% complain to their physician, remaining 96% just form an opinion and go away. It also goes on to show that 1 dissatisfied patient tells 8-10 pts about their experience & 1 out of 5 will tell 20 people about his /her experience with the doctor. Again, from the dissatisfied only 9% may come back & the rest 91% may not.

What makes these findings even more relevant is that this is the tendency in a market where health care is under the purview of the National Health Service. Patients are required to go to Doctors in the area that they live in. Imagine what the situation would be when the patient has full liberty to choose his own Doctor.

Another survey conducted to gauge why people tend to change doctors, showed some of the reasons as

• relocation (3%),
• having a doctor in the family (5%),
• opting for a cheaper alternative (9%) and
• not getting the desired result (14%).
• A horrifying 69% of patients change their doctor due to the attitude (both of physician and the staff)

Inculcate loyalty in your patients!
It takes almost double the effort to satisfy a new patient than to maintain satisfaction in an existing one. For us a satisfied patient is almost worth 10 new patients. 'Who Else Would Refer Us New Patients? ' Hence patient/ customer satisfaction is of paramount importance for us.