The healthcare industry is committed to providing an excellent standard of care to its patients, but that doesn’t mean it always achieves perfection. According to the CDC, there are around 1 billion doctor visits in the US – with the average person visiting 4x a year. With so many people attending health services, it’s only natural that some patients leave feeling a little disgruntled. With this in mind, we discuss four common complaints that patients make about healthcare.
Dismissiveness
When you visit the ER or doctor’s surgery, you expect your concerns to be taken seriously. However, whether a doctor doesn’t see your issue as important or there’s a communication breakdown, sometimes patients can leave feeling as though they’ve been dismissed. Unfortunately, this can lead to further health complications because of a missed diagnosis.
Arguably, this is one of the most dangerous complaints a patient can have because their health was disregarded. If this happens, a patent is more than within their rights to team up with failure to diagnose attorneys and file for compensation.
To avoid being negligent under the failure to diagnose parameters, healthcare providers need to have solid communication and documentation processes in place, which can only be achieved through staff training to make sure everyone is on board.
Long Wait Times
Everyone that has ever been to a doctor’s appointment or visited the ER will understand the frustration of long wait times. Given that the majority of practices request patients to arrive up to 30 minutes before an appointment, but then keep them waiting much longer than this, there’s no surprise that this ranks almost number one out of all patient problems.
Unfortunately, despite each appointment having an allotted time window, a doctor can soon fall behind on their schedule. To reduce frustration, healthcare providers can provide light entertainment in their waiting areas. Additionally, they should make efforts to keep every patient updated on when they’ll be seen.
Short Contact Time
Every single patient deserves to be treated fairly, meaning everyone should receive the same level of attention, especially after waiting so long for an appointment. However, if a doctor is falling behind or the end of the day is fast approaching, some patients may be left feeling as though they weren’t given an appropriate amount of time.
Even though different medical appointments vary in time to complete, scheduled time should be used to the fullest extent because it allows patients to ask any questions they may have.
Billing and Insurance
Healthcare isn’t a cheap business, and the cost of appointments is only increasing. Therefore, despite the cost of healthcare being expected, patients don’t tend to enjoy surprise costs. If this is regularly the case, you may find it difficult to track people down to make payments.
To reduce friction when it comes to billing, healthcare providers should be 100% transparent about what a patient is paying for. As well as this, there should be plenty of payment options including finance.
Healthcare providers do their best to avoid mishaps, but with the sheer number of appointments booked every year, mistakes happen.
