by Joanna Wyganowska, MBA, PMP – VP of Marketing
As we are entering the “new normal”, I am starting to get more and more phone calls, e-mails, and letters reminding me about our family’s missed medical appointments, dentist checkups, vaccinations, etc. I even got a bill from one practice for my missed appointment back in April (and yes, I did call them back but just to let them know that I am going to switch the dentist because of that unwarranted bill).
I know doctors want to see us, and they want to get back to their normal volume of patient visits; however, they are forgetting about telling me one critical thing:
What have they done to keep me safe during my next visit?
I know it might sound trivial, but this is what I am expecting as a consumer – tell me what you have done for me.
Unfortunately, none of the messages and letters I received included a single sentence about how my experience will look post-COVID and what the practice is going to do to protect me and my family from potential exposure.
This is the only reason I am not rescheduling my appointments right now; I am assuming I am not the only one.
So here is a quick list of things you might want to include in your letter, or add to your website, or have your office staff convey when trying to rebook appointments:
Providers and clinicians, too, will see benefits from these powerful tools. Patient wait times and status updates are all driven by location movements and don’t require manual intervention from staff, leaving people free to go about their work while knowing patients and others are getting the information they need. Because of this, the enhanced patient experience comes at no resource cost.
Am I asking too much? No, I am just asking you to let me know what my “new-normal” patient experience is going to look like and how you are going to keep me safe.
So, before you start calling and texting to schedule my next appointment, sit down and write out your COVID-Safe Environment procedures and let me know about them.
If you see gaps in your processes, please step up your game. There are many tools you can deploy quickly and affordably to make my next visit safer. It is that simple, and it is the only reason I am not seeing you yet.