Social media posts are generating a wealth of constructive feedback about the registration process, something that’s not always easy for patient access to come by. “That helps departments to improve,” says Christine L. Cunningham, MBA, CPXP, administrative director of the Office of Patient Experience at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and Stanford Children’s Health in Palo Alto, CA. Here are some common reasons for negative social media posts about patient access:
- It took too long to get an appointment.
Cunningham tells the person that strategies are in place to address the issue.
For instance, if the social media post states that it took months to get an appointment at a particular clinic, she can explain that two physicians are on leave, and efforts are underway to recruit an additional physician.
- A caller experienced trouble making an appointment.
“The issue we have is getting a live person on the phone,” Cunningham reports.
Lauree Miller, senior director of patient access operations and revenue cycle services at Conifer Health Solutions, offers this suggestion to combat this common complaint: “Have the ability to press zero to speak to a live person so that the situation can be escalated and resolved.”
- Patients are unhappy about their bill.
Miller says patient access has a few options to head off such complaints. “One of the things we’re doing to be proactive in that regard is giving patients an estimate before they come in,” she says. “Patients need to plan for their financial healthcare in addition to their medical care.” Two other recommended approaches:
-Give patients easily understandable materials to reduce confusion over bills;
-Give patients a way to talk to somebody quickly who can answer questions so the patient doesn’t have to leave a message.
Although Boston Children’s Hospital’s patient access team doesn’t directly manage social media posts, “they are made aware of major complaints related to access posted on social media,” says Senior Social Media Specialist Lily Vautour. In some recent posts, patients complained about the difficulty of scheduling appointments, wait times, parking, transportation to the hospital, and communicating with particular departments by phone or email. “In some cases, we flag these kinds of comments to specific departments to help aid in a resolution,” Vautour says.
The social media and patient relations teams usually don’t defend the hospital’s perspective publicly and, instead, try to bring the discussion offline. “But we will step in to clarify certain topics related to access if the information could be useful to others viewing our comment threads,” Vautour says. For instance, a patient may complain she missed an appointment because of inadequate transportation to the hospital, without realizing multiple bus routes are available.
Last year, the hospital opened private Facebook messaging to field questions, comments, complaints, and compliments. “Things are always evolving with social media,” Vautour says. “I can definitely envision doing more to partner with patient access teams in the future.”
SOURCE
- Lily Vautour, Senior Social Media Specialist, Boston Children’s Hospital. Phone: (617) 919-3128. Email: [email protected].
Social media posts generate a wealth of constructive feedback about the registration process.
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