BACK TALK SYSTEMS, INC. 14998 W. 6th Avenue, Suite E-500 Golden, CO 80904-5025 800/937-3113 800/696-1165 (fax) www.backtalksystems.com GET YOUR CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS ON-LINE Save TIME and MONEY at http://www.ChiroCredit.com. Team Tip #33 DIFFICULT PROBLEMS...POSITIVE SOLUTIONS (part 2) by Susan Hoy A great patient experience usually is the result of proper scheduling. An out of control schedule can result in an out of control practice! Whether you are just building your practice or already have a busy one, you must have control of your schedule. If you want to have a good patient flow throughout your office, you must understand your patients and their personalities. Scheduling is no easy job! A few weeks ago, I was giving a seminar in Denver. When I opened the program up for questions, I received several questions in regard to handling difficult patients at the front desk. Since I believe that good scheduling is the key to a successful practice, I decided to dedicate the next few articles to scheduling problems. Question: What do you do when you have a patient stand at the front desk and stare at you when you're busy, Continuing to stand there even when you ask him to have a seat? This happens every time this particular patient comes into our office. Answer: This is not an unusual situation. We all have patients like this. There could be a couple of reasons your patient is doing this. The first is that you're nice and friendly and he just wants to talk to you. Our patients usually fit into certain personality groupings. If you take the time to loosely categorize your patients, it would help. There are those patients who love to talk. They are very outgoing and animated. They tend to hang around the front desk and want to socialize. These patients take more time with the doctor too, because they just love to talk. Other patients will tend to be very quiet and it is difficult to draw them out. These patients will sit quietly in your reception room and wait their turn. That doesn't mean they don't get upset if they have to wait, it just means you will not know when they do. Their solution, when there is a problem, is to leave the practice rather than make waves. Then we have the patients who are very detailed and fastidious. They have lots and lots of questions and seek to understand every aspect of their care. These patients take more time than others and definitely want to get their questions answered and get their money's worth. I suspect that the patient you are describing, however, is none of the above. This patient is a very powerful executive type. He tends to be forceful, controlling, manipulative, and always in a hurry. The reason he stands in front of you is to make you uncomfortable. He knows exactly what he's doing! His plan is to make you so uncomfortable that you will put him to the head of the line just to get rid of him. Often, that's exactly what we do! I tend to love patients like this because they are fast and they don't waste a lot of our time. They get straight to the point with the doctor, get what they want, and go back to work! These patients will drive you crazy until they get what they want. If you keep them waiting too long, they will move on to another office that realizes just how important they are. I have several solutions from which you can choose. You can just let him stand there and go about your work without making conversation until it is his turn. This tends to make you uncomfortable, being the service-oriented person that you are. Besides, he gets in the way of other patients and he gets frustrated too. Or...you could ask him to be seated by saying the following: "Mr. Smith, I'm going to bring you back in a few minutes. I know you 're in a hurry, so I'll let the doctor know right now that you're here. I promise it won't be too long. Just sit down until I get the opportunity to take you back to the adjustment room." By saying this, you are acknowledging his importance and his impatience. Satisfied, he will usually be seated now that you know his needs. In our office we have several adjustment rooms. We have a very busy practice and patient flow is our first priority. Knowing that if I make this patient wait until our doctor treats the talkative patient and the patient who has many questions, Mr. Smith is going to do one of two things, walk out or cause me a lot of stress, neither of which is acceptable to me! So... I will say to him, "I know you're in a hurry and I'm going to take good care of you today. Just do me a favor and be seated for a few minutes. You'll be on you way in no time!" Now, Mr. Smith feels very satisfied that he's getting the priority treatment he deserves and I have just made him feel special. I feel good too because I got him off my back! I will still take the other two patients back before Mr. Smith, however, when I take Mr. Smith to his adjustment room, I will have our doctor see him before the others. No one is the wiser, and our schedule continues to flow. Scheduling and good patient flow is very tricky. It truly must be choreographed. It takes a CA who knows her patients to be able to schedule correctly. Patients who have a good experience in our office will love coming and will love to refer their family and friends. There is a sign in our reception room that says, "Patients will be taken according to their appointment time." In most cases, that is true. However, it does not mean that the doctor will see them according to their appointment times. For instance, if I have a M. D. or another doctor who has to get back to his or her patients, I will definitely put him in front of a Medicare patient who is retired and has more time. If it is obvious that I will be taking a patient out of turn, I will ask permission, explaining that the doctor must get back to his patients. In most cases, the patient is delighted to help a doctor get back to his patients. I believe everything is in the presentation. If you communicate properly, you can usually keep your patients from getting angry. To a patient I consider a "speed bump", I will say, "Mrs. Miller, I'm going to have the doctor see Mr. Smith before you today because he is in a hurry. That will give the doctor more time to spend with you today." This makes Mrs. Miller feel special and it gets Mr. Smith on his way. More importantly, I have less stress. As for Mr. Smith, he now knows that I will help him get out of our office as quickly as possible. He is more likely to sign in and be seated in our reception room every time. The most important part of running a good schedule is the art of communication. There are times when we all would just like to hide under our desks instead of facing our patients, especially when we know they have been kept waiting. But hiding under you desk will just make them more difficult! I promise you the most valuable tool when you are running behind is communication. You will be amazed how understanding your patients can be when you are honest with them and let them know what's going on and when they will be seeing the doctor. In fact, when you communicate with your patients about running behind, often they'll tell you they are not in a hurry. Often they will happily reschedule their appointment when you are less busy or they can go on another errand and be taken immediately when they return. It's a good idea to offer a solution and let the patient decide what to do. It's important to remember that when we let our patients know what's going on they feel more in control. It is such a helpless feeling when they think they have been forgotten or worse yet, ignored. You will be serving your patients and yourself when you confront the difficulty headon. So...for a good patient experience, when it comes to scheduling, take my advice, communicate and confront the problem. Everyone will be happier! You may order our new TEAM TRAINING AND PRACTICE MANAGEMENT MANUAL package, from which this article is taken, by calling 800/937-3113 today.