Customer Service

[deefizzle]

This is something that really bothers me. It really is becoming more important to satisfy the "customer" than it is to treat the "patient". I had a patient recently who called our office DEMANDING (in her words) to be rx'd a certain medication because another doctor suggested it previously and she apparently declined it. There's no record that the initial doctor offered to rx it, but now she wants the doctor on duty (I work in urgent care and we have doctors rotate through) to prescribe. He does not feel it's an appropriate med for the diagnosis. After MUCH drama, my supervisor encouraged me to go back to the doctor and basically beg him, because "this is becoming a customer service issue and we want the patient to be happy so they come back." On one hand I get it, because we need to "bring patients in" but on the other hand, we are allowing the patient to dictate her own care at the opposition of the physician. Does anyone else experience this?

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Oh boy! The "customer service" model of patient care is the source of must frustration among nurses and CNAs. It seems ludicrous to me to tie funding to "patient satisfaction" scores, and hopefully one day soon the pendulum will swing the other way. In the mean time, you will find clueless administrators urging health care professionals to subjugate patient care to customer service. I don't know the solution -- other than to throw out the model completely. Since that isn't going to happen any time soon, you survive by doing what you know to be right and collecting these stories to laugh about one day.

[KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN]

I have a strong feeling that it is going to happen rather soon. Prescription drugs' abuse takes too many lives to go unnoticed, and "customer satisfaction" is one, if not the most important, driver for prescribing more and more "good stuff". Add to this luckluster results in "mass production" surgeries like joint replacement (due to not forcing pre-surgical treatment of co-morbidities, as people might feel suddenly upset if told to lose weight, stop smoking and get compliant with meds), massive spending on futile medical support b/o family requests, obesity epidemic, etc.

Whoever came up with an idea of "customer service" applied to medical business outside of spas and aesthetic medicine, deserves a monument on National Mall, with words "spit here, please" written on it.