An apple a day keeps the doctor away – or so they used to say. Sometimes, despite eating your prescribed 5 a day (I know the image shows 4), but things may crop up and you do want to talk to your doctor.
A colleagues teenage child wanted to make an appointment at the doctors this week for something that was bothering them. Nothing major but it was something that did not warrant a trip to the hospital, but they did want an opinion on something from a medical professional.
If calling in the daytime, the response was “sorry all todays appointments have gone please call at 8am tomorrow to see if you can get an appointment”…
This results in a “rush hour” of traffic where many patients are trying to get through at the same time, congesting the system, and are either greeted with an engaged tone, get put in a queue on a long hold, or in some situations having negotiated the phone system, the call was picked up and then dropped.
Clearly this is not great for the patient – the end user, resulting in even more stress and anxiety on top of the original concern, nor does it do the medical centres reputation any good.
Having finally gotten through after the best part of an hour, comments were made to the receptionist about the troubles in getting through, only to be dismissed that the phones are working fine…
Hmm. Not sure they are, or certainly NOT to the best of their ability.
What if this was an elderly relative, who had been trying to get in touch with the doctors day after day, week after week without success, for something that was concerning them that ended up becoming serious and that could have ended badly.
I am sure there will be many of you out there who have had similar telecoms pains when trying to make appointments.
Working in the comms industry I wanted to put something out there, to invite any medical practices, who might have similar issues, to drop me a line. We can certainly help here. Phone systems can work much smarter these days and can help improve customer satisfaction.
We are keen to hear from anyone who is currently facing challenges like the ones mentioned above, and who are looking for ways to improve patient experience and systems to work smarter.
#medical #patientexperience #work #help #doctors
Image credit:
Photo by Any Lane from Pexels
