15 Ways You Can Endear Yourself to Patients
If your practice is considering a patient satisfaction survey in the future, try some of these cheap even free and easy ideas to endear yourself to your patients in advance of the survey.
1. Put a television and VCR in your waiting room. Play health related tapes on it. Or if you are a pediatric practice, purchase some children’s movies The Lion King plays well.
2. Greet your patients by name.
3. Start a lending library for your patients. Every physician has books and magazines he or she doesn’t get to or doesn’t use regularly. Give your patients access to them. This works especially well for obstetric and pediatric practices.
4. If your exam rooms have thin walls, provide music or white noise to mask voices in the other rooms.
5. Physicians should listen to patients for at least one minute before interrupting. Don’t look away from the patient or take notes for the first minute or two.
6. Suggest that the doctors sit in the exam room, eye level with the patients.
7. Return phone calls within four hours of their receipt make time to return phone calls twice a day.
8. Make sure physicians knock on the exam room door before entering.
9. Keep patients informed of delays and let them know from the outset if they are facing a wait.
10. Consider investing in one or two pagers for use when your practice is running behind. If your practice is located in a nice shopping or walking area, or if there is a coffee shop nearby, give the patients a pager and beep them when the wait is down to 10 minutes.
11. Invest in name tags for your staff. You know the patients names, so shouldn’t they know yours?
12. Offer patients the option of paying by credit card. If you offer this already or if you begin the service, be sure to promote it to your patients.
13. If a patient refers someone to your practice, take the time to write that patient a thank-you note. And send a thank-you to all your new patients, too. Patients love to feel special.
14. Send patients birthday cards. You have their birthdays in your files, so the only cost is the card and stamp. Again, it makes your patients feel special.
15. Put a phone in the reception area. If you are running late, this gives patients a way to let business associates or family members know they may be late without tying up your reception area phone.
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