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7 Common Causes Of Poor Hospital Reviews

Patients expect the best care from their physicians. When selecting a medical office, about 75 percent of patients rely on reviews. The internet allows patients to share their experiences regarding health providers especially negative ones. Positive reviews are extremely important when patients are choosing a healthcare provider. Negative comments and reviews are very harmful to any business.

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Image credit: nomorephonetag.com

Fortunately, you can use these to improve your service delivery. Embracing negative feedback from patients helps managers of medical facilities to identify areas that need development. Additionally, it also encourages stepping up the effort to broaden catering to the patient’s needs. You don’t have to snub negative feedback about your facility. These honest opinions give insights into positive changes you can make in your medical office.

Here are some of those shattering reviews you can turn into positives.

Poor Communication

Effective communication is very important in the medical field at all times. However, patients usually complain of clueless customer service agents. These take calls without an idea of what patients want while others offer incorrect information.

Poor communication encourages prolonged queues, irritation, frustration, and errors. Additionally, inadequate phone service is a significant barrier to interaction between healthcare providers and patients. Get medical answering services to help your medical office handle the complexity of scheduling appointments and responding to patient queries.

Rude Staff

Patients usually complain of rude personnel in the emergency room. Perhaps the way they talk makes patients feel they are inconveniencing. This is one of the most common patient complaints at least in their lifetime. There is no excuse for insulting and patronizing attitudes of medical staff. However, you have to understand their causes.

The chances are high that the indifference and insensitive remarks towards patients results from overworking, stress, and poor management support. Fixing this will significantly lead to a better patient experience without negative reviews about your medical practice.

Misdiagnosis

Most medical malpractice lawsuits result from misdiagnosis of medical conditions. Diagnosis errors lead to poor wrong treatment, delayed treatment, or no treatment. This makes the patient’s condition to worsen, adverse side effects, and death in extreme cases. Some of the most effective strategies to prevent diagnosis errors include:

• Stronger collaboration for staff handling treatment

• Enhanced communication with patients

• Protection of nurses and physician from burnout

• Appropriate use of medical tech for enhanced diagnosis

Unqualified Staff

Medical office administrators should avoid hiring incompetent staff. This prevents situations like deaths that could have been avoided. Hiring unqualified personnel puts patients’ lives in grave danger. Avowing this scenario requires the following of standard recruitment procedures and human resource policies.

Regardless of the position you are filling, vetting is very important to ensure that the candidates have the appropriate qualifications and professional licenses. On-going training programs are also essential to ensure that all your employees meet quality and compliance standards of medical services.

Extremely Long Waiting Times

Keeping patients waiting too long before seeing the doctor encourages frustration. It gets worse when the patient has a medical emergency. Emergency rooms usually suffer from long wait times during periods of overcrowding. This usually happens in times like these with the coronavirus outbreak.

Medical offices are handling COVID-19 patients in large numbers but have to deal with regular medical issues as well. This is making it hard for medical staff to schedule emergencies and handling patient flow. However, you can use some strategies to streamline processes in your medical office including:

• Using a queuing app

• Introduction of digital forms

• Implementing a no-shows policy

• Outsourcing phone answering to free up admin time

Dirty Facilities

A medical facility needs regular cleaning with a beautiful entrance and rooms that are sparkling. Cleanliness is extremely important to prevent the spread of viruses to staff and other patients. A well-maintained medical office gives patients a positive perception, lessens the risk of health-care-related issues, boost the HCAHPAS score. The rule of thumb is to always keep your medical facility clean and sanitized especially during the current coronavirus outbreak. Cleanliness limits the presence of the virus on all surfaces in your premises.

Incorrect Billing

Medical offices that can’t send correct billing to patients cause a lot of frustration and negative feedback. About 80 percent of hospitals in the US face errors in their billing processes. Keeping your reputation requires a clearly defined reimbursement policy that is easily accessible and free from hidden charges. A good idea is to outsource a professional medical billing agency to get a professional team to handle the processes on your behalf.

Bottom Line

Reputation matters regardless of the business. A medical facility with a lot of negative reviews is less likely to attract customers. Ignoring to find solutions to the most common complaints of patients only worsens the problem and chases away new ones. However, receiving negative feedback and finding appropriate solutions pays off. Addressing the complaints with time makes your facility exceed patients’ expectations and subsequent positive reviews.


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