Turning Service Failures into Opportunities to improve the overall patient experience
When we strive to improve the patient’s experience through seamless, effective service; building trust, loyalty, and treating patients and their families with kindness, dignity, and respect, inevitably things still go wrong. Our goal, of course, is to prevent pain points from happening by understanding the patient’s journey, and anticipating the patient’s needs.
Despite our efforts, however, system problems and complaints do occur. Once trust is broken because of a service failure, it is difficult to regain. Service failures in any sector are inevitable, but having dissatisfied patients is not. We must learn to recover from these failures.
- Is it a one-off situation?
- Do we have a trend where we have received similar complaints?
- Can our remedy be an easy fix, or do we need a system change?
It is tempting to dismiss our patient’s concerns and complaints by justifying to ourselves that we have staffing issues, or the patient is too demanding and challenging, or the issue was petty. This would be an egregious error.
Feedback is a Gift
As healthcare providers, we need to take patient and/or family feedback, albeit negative, and have the mindset that feedback about their lived experience is a gift to us. We get to see their experience through their eyes, and it should open ours. Every patient’s concern or complaint is an opportunity to improve our commitment to the patient’s experience, even if the healthcare organization is not to blame.
Why do we do it?
We practice service recovery because it is a good, fundamental business practice that can turn a negative situation into a positive statement about our organization. In addition, it helps curb bad public relations, as dissatisfied customers tend to tell others about their negative experience.
What is Service Recovery in Healthcare? (healthstream.com)
It is essential to address concerns and take steps to remedy the situation as soon as you become aware of the situation. This is important not only for the patient’s well-being but also for the reputation and quality improvement of your organization and to prevent patient churn which would have a negative impact on census, revenue, and reputation.
Listen and Understand the Patient
The first and most crucial step is to listen to understand the patient’s concerns and complaints. Allow them to express their feelings and experiences. Show empathy and understanding. It is important to acknowledge the issue and express regret even if the complaint cannot be substantiated. Offer a sincere apology, tell the patient you will investigate, and take appropriate action.
Close the Service Loop
Once the investigation is completed, close the loop, and get back to the patient, keep lines of communication open. Let them know you have heard them and took their issue seriously. Use the incident as an opportunity for improvement.
Most healthcare organizations have protocols for handling complaints. Complaint and grievance logs are kept. But this wealth of knowledge about our patient experiences shouldn’t be marked, resolved and filed away. Use this gift to learn. Use this gift to improve. Be transparent with our caregivers and their role in preventing and resolving complaints. Empower our caregivers to take quick and decisive action when something doesn’t go as expected.
We often blame our caregivers and state that they were given additional training as our corrective action. This is really an excuse. Our valued caregivers do the best with what they have. As leaders, do we ensure that our caregivers have what they need to provide the best experience? It is so easy for us at our desks as we write up our corrective action, but as leaders, do we go back and evaluate whether there has been a behavioral change? Do we assess what our caregivers need to do their best work?
If we keep hearing the same complaints, we, the leaders, must remedy them. We need to believe that the patient’s voice is an asset. We should feel comfortable soliciting feedback with our surveys and rounding. Let it not be perfunctory but viewed to gain knowledge about our care and our patient’s experience with us. A simple question when rounding is to ask, “How is everything?” You will be amazed at the insight you might gain from that simple question.
Service recovery represents an opportunity to create the best possible patient experience. At the same time, it enables organizations to evaluate the processes that led to the issue. Effective service recovery is a three-part process.
- Identify the issue.
- Resolve the issue.
- Put in place the systemic process changes that are needed.
The needed systemic process changes will not only prevent reoccurrence but also improve the overall patient experience and turn our dissatisfied patients into loyal customers.
Takeaways
Treat patient complaints as gifts to take action.
If there is a pattern of complaints, conduct a diagnosis and make changes.
Don’t delay action – ensure patients know they have been heard.