Why You Need to Brand Your Practice’s Patient Experience

Many practices can identify with the terrifying moment when you get an email from Yelp saying that your practice has received a new review. You’re sitting in your office chair, hanging in the balance of either honor or shame. Did a patient write complimentary comments about your service and how much they loved your practice or did they leave a scathing review saying how rude your office staff was to them?  It’s challenging to manage negative reviews, especially in the instances where the patient was upset over something you could not control. People are exponentially more likely to provide feedback on something they either absolutely love or absolutely loathe, while the likelihood of comments coming from someone who had an “okay” experience is very low.

This means, you need to take every effort to provide each patient with a flawless experience to promote more positive reviews. The best way to do so is to brand your patient experience. Adding small touch-points to your patient process can make a huge difference in perception. Simple changes such as personally introducing a patient to each staff member they will meet with, can go a long way. Additionally, you could exchange paper robes for terry cloth ones or give patients slippers to protect their feet from chilly floors in the winter.

Things like that are what people remember when they leave your office. If they had to wait an extra 15 minutes because your schedule was running behind, then have coupons available as an apology. Whenever you travel Southwest Airlines for instance, if your flight gets delayed they offer complimentary adult beverages as collateral. (You’re not alone if you find yourself wishing for a flight delay every once in a while.)

To elicit positive responses, you can recruit the help of your staff. It likely happens everyday, that a patient says something positive in passing about their time at your practice. You can take those opportunities to remind patients that they can go online and review your practice.

You might think that websites like Yelp, Facebook and Google’s review pages don’t matter, but patients are becoming increasingly better consumers of their own care. They are turning to the Internet to find information on their physicians, treatments and procedures.   In some statistics provided by Fluency Media, it was determined that 85% of Millennials and 78% of Baby Boomers are searching for health topics online. Take the appropriate steps to improve your patient experience while promoting positive reviews and you will be able to capture the attention of more patients and improve your reach!

Social Media Checklist for Healthcare Practices

Getty Image, Embedded for Healthcare Blogging

If your practice is going to get started using social media, a good first step is to go through an initial checklist to determine where to begin. In some cases, you might already have laid the groundwork and you’re just ready to figure out what to do next. I’ve often heard doctors ask, “Does my practice really need a Facebook page?” or “Why do I need a blog?” I always respond to them the same way, telling them that they need to join the conversation that patients are already having online. By refusing to adopt social media as a part of their marketing plan, medical practices are taking themselves out of the game.

Start transforming your marketing today with our checklist:

Free Download: Healthcare Social Media Checklist

Other Related Articles:

-       Why Your Practice Needs Social Media

-       Dealing With Negative Feedback on Social Media

Resourceful Links:

-       Symplur Healthcare Hashtag Project

10 Things You Should Know About the Medicare Payment Data Release

Last week, CMS released a report summarizing the Medicare billing data for physicians across the country. Doctors panicked and patients attempted to understand what all these steep numbers meant, meanwhile buzz terms like “healthcare price transparency” and “reimbursement rates” flew around with more aggressive velocity than ever before.

For those that are unsure what this billing report really means, we’ve given you a breakdown. Read on to learn everything you need to know about this release.

1.     The report shows which physician specialists are getting paid the most and approximately how much they are receiving from CMS.

2.     So what are these payments supposed to cover? Medicare fees are supposed to cover the physician’s actual work, overhead costs for their equipment, malpractice insurance and other costs. What are those “other” costs though?

3.     It shows amounts paid but doesn’t delineate where specialties with high overhead costs come into play. For example, Radiation Oncologists incur significant overhead costs to provide their specialized services, so they get reimbursed much more to cover those costs.

Information provided by The Wall Street Journal. Source: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

4.     There are tons of dollar amounts being shown, but the figures do not correlate to patient levels or success rates, so the impact of the costs cannot be easily determined.

5.     The report was supposed to help catch Medicare fraud activity, but it doesn’t do this very effectively. This is because it lumps a lot of physicians into groups regardless of outside factors like overhead costs.

6.     The goal of displaying this data was that exposure would change overall behavior.

7.     The database does not break out payments by PC and TC. Rather, they are aggregated, explaining why the numbers seen in the Wall Street Journal article are so steep.

8.     Separate from the aggregated data, there is also a larger dataset of information which is HUGE and includes the following information for each physician in the country:

·         Average charge/CPT code

·         Number submitted/CPT code

·         Average amount per procedure code

·         Billing addresses of physicians

·         Procedure performed in a “facility” or “non-facility”

·         POS codes for procedures

9.     This dataset file is too big for Excel, but if you link the text file to Access you can use it.   We learned via the RBMA chatter, that some have had success this way, saying, “Once I got a query result I used Excel to manipulate and analyze the data.” Keep this in mind if you’re looking for a way to sort the data yourself.

10. This big number: $121 million. As in, the sum of what the top 10 physician billers charged for Medicare in 2012.

Important links for learning more:

Dataset:

http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Provider-Charge-Data/Physician-and-Other-Supplier.html

WSJ Article:

http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303873604579492012568434456-lMyQjAxMTA0MDEwMTExNDEyWj

WonkBlog Summary of Physician Responses:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/10/wonkbook-why-doctors-are-upset-about-the-medicare-payment-data-release/

Dealing With Negative Feedback on Social Media

At the RBMA Building Better Marketing Programs conference in Long Beach last month, I hosted a presentation on implementing social media programs into a practice’s marketing plan.  In years past, health care professionals were apprehensive to fully embrace social media as a means for reaching patients.  Alas, this year I saw a shift in acceptance.  The one thing practice managers and marketing representatives were concerned with though?

Negative patient feedback.

How do you deal with a negative comment about your service? Do you delete it? Do you respond? What about those patients who post crazy thoughts or even outright lies about your practice?

As with face-to-face interactions, there are no specific protocols for handling each scenario with review sites and social media.  It can be intimidating to handle patient feedback online because it isn’t how people are accustomed to dealing with patients. The key to handling negative patient feedback on social media is understanding the kinds of complaints and how to manage them.

A great article from Health Care Communication News sums it up perfectly. (Read the full article here: 4 types of negative feedback on your hospital’s social media channels)

Standard Problem: A patient or referring physician posts their issues with your practice online. It could be small or large, based on personal preference or a perceived issue.

Good thing: It can point out some real issues your practice needs to address.

Solution: A personal or public response, which one depends on how large the issue has become. Make sure you’re taking action though and not ignoring the complaint.

Example Response: “Thank you very much for letting us know, we truly care about our patients’ feedback. Here’s why we do things this way...”

Constructive criticism: This is a great complaint to receive because it gives you the opportunity to improve.  Someone could say something like, “I wish I could have saved time by filling out forms online.”

Good thing: Those who provide constructive criticism are usually loyal to your practice.

Solution: Construct a formal response, thanking them for their constructive feedback. If you can find a way to implement their request, be sure to let them know you’re going to try.

Example Response: “Thanks so much Ms. Patient for your response, you made a really good point. We’ll certainly talk to our website guy and ask them to add the forms online. Hope this helps next time!”

Warranted attack:  Someone at the practice did something to upset someone and now they are displeased.

Good thing: You have the opportunity to fix the situation, because they opened lines of communication.

Solution: This can be hard to handle and even more challenging to hear. You should respond quickly and be positive but proactive.  Thank them for the feedback and let them know that you are certainly going to take steps to fix the problem.

Example Response: “We are so sorry that you had such a bad experience here but we understand where you are coming from with this. We’d love to talk more and figure out a way to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

Wildcat: Here’s that crazy patient we were talking about before. Sometimes people just want to complain. Basically, the commenter has no legitimate reason to complain or be upset.

Good thing: Most people will recognize that this is an off-the-wall complaint.

Solution: Don’t let yourself get baited into an argument. Simply ignore the comment and remove it from your page.

Example Response: Delete J

So don’t be worried about how to respond, you’ll learn as you go. Just look at it as learning how to communicate with new people. Whether they are online or in person, people are all the same. They just want to be heard.

March Madness: Picking Your Health Care Plan

In the spirit of March Madness, our office is all a twitter with anticipation to see whose bracket will be the least destroyed after the National Championship game.  We were all like little kids on Christmas morning last week, finalizing our brackets and bragging to one another about who was going to be proclaimed master of the universe (read: the luckiest person in our office).  Alas, the first day of games left some certain Ohio fans (who shall remain nameless) crying at their desks and others laughing maniacally about their unforeseen success.

March is about more than just basketball around here though. As the month draws to a close, we’ll be chatting more and more about price shopping and health care coverage options with the deadline to select your coverage plan being March 31st.  Health care transparency isn’t all fun and games like March Madness, as a patient’s decision about their coverage plan carries much more weight.  However, there are a number of similarities in the decision making process.  With so many options, how is a person supposed to choose?! 

Do you pick your health care the way you pick your March Madness bracket?

The “Top Seed Snob”

You go with the most expensive option because you figure that high cost must equal quality. You’ve heard that a certain provider is top notch, so you pay their high costs without question. Your health is the number one priority after all. Bad news is, this might not be the best strategy. This is like everyone who had Duke going all the way because they’d heard they were basketball legends, only to realize that Mercer crushed their dreams.

The “Overly-Researched, Overly-Confused”

You look at the list and are overwhelmed by your options, so you start by reading everything you can about each provider. You become a wealth of knowledge regarding statistics and survival ratings, but the more you know, the more confusing your decision becomes. This is like the bracket player who picks winners based on rebound rates and average points per game, only to have their team lose in the first round to a team like Dayton.

The “Randomized Hopeful”

You figure there can’t really be a bad option, so you close your eyes and pick. You never know what’s going to happen or how much coverage you’ll need, so you just hope for the best. This is basically the same as filling out your bracket based on the team names you like the most or the mascots who sound most ridiculous.

The “The Sounds Familiar”

You’ve seen the commercials or recognize a logo from your newspaper, magazine or that billboard on your way to work, so you pick that provider without much research.  It’s essentially the same as picking your cousin’s alma mater as the champions just because you visited during spring break one time.

The “Cinderella Story”

You decide your best option as far as health care coverage is to go without any plan. You’re healthy and young and don’t anticipate any high costs coming down the pipeline, plus you figure if you end up needing an expensive one time procedure like an MRI, you’ll just shop around to find the lowest self-pay price. This is kind of like FGCU last year, flying under the radar and crushing everyone’s brackets. Ultimately, a win wasn’t in their future, but they did better than anyone expected.

For a little chuckle, check out this Buzzfeed article about the many thoughts going through your head when picking your brackets. You could say that while picking your healthcare plan, you might have many of the same thoughts.

64 Thoughts You Have While Filling Out Your March Madness Bracket