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Ideas, tips and techniques for new generation selling and customer support.
Category Archives: healthcare
2010
“Strong and lasting relationships with our patients”: Berkeley HeartLab optimizes both care and costs
So many aspects of healthcare are arcane, complex, almost magical. Many of us have a healthcare miracle story to tell. I have my own from when I battled cancer three years ago. These are the feel-good medicine and medical stories that get passed along when friends, family and colleagues become ill.
But for every magical or miraculous story, there is another—especially in the area of customer care—that shows healthcare is too often behind the times. Customers spend more time in healthcare waiting rooms than any other industry, and despite constant cost pressures, staff time is too often used inefficiently.
Technology can help. In this, the third podcast in our series Reinventing Healthcare with Technology, we hear from a 
TimeTrade customer about how they’ve improved operations terrifically, producing both better efficiency and better customer outcomes – while saving $125,000 a year, far more than the system costs them. How smart is that?
Matt Sitter is Director of Marketing for the Disease Management Program at Berkeley HeartLab (BHLInc.com). Listen as he shares his first-hand success at transforming the business of care: “It’s incredibly gratifying to see the success that a number of our patients have with the 4MyHeart program.”
Podcast: Play in new window
Filed under: Podcasts, healthcare, scheduling software
2010
“Remarkable success in quality and satisfaction”:
Kaiser-Permanente’s approach to patient-centric care
What if healthcare’s inherent problems turned out not to be inherent at all?
Last month we introduced our new podcast series, Reinventing Healthcare with Technology. In our first episode we heard from innovative Brooklyn doctor Jay Parkinson, MD about the need to Reform a System That’s Badly Broken.
Today we travel to the other coast to learn what Kaiser Permanente has found, after ten years of working on some of the things Dr. Parkinson envisions. And what they’ve found, as series host Paul Gillin says in the introduction, is “remarkable successes in quality of care and member satisfaction”:
- KP’s Kate Christensen MD reports that 3.2 million members are registered users of Kaiser’s online system, making appointments online, emailing their doctors, viewing lab results and researching their condition.
- Her project partner Judy Derman cites patient quotes like “I feel more in control of my medical condition” and “I feel more confident, and closer to my physician.”
Dr. Christensen and Ms. Derman have years of data to establish that good healthcare can come with good customer service, and technology can help. Join us in listening to their real-world experience.
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Podcast: Play in new window
Filed under: Podcasts, healthcare
Tagged: healthcare, kaiser permanente, podcast
2009
Customer Care Goes High Tech With Appointment Scheduling Software
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While some may think that automated technology diminishes customer service, the opposite can be true. Appointment scheduling software has actually been proven to help businesses streamline processes and deliver better customer service.
2009
“Reforming a system that’s badly broken”: an interview with Jay Parkinson MD
Friday we introduced our new podcast series, Reinventing Healthcare with Technology. It’s an educational series about how this vitally important industry can modernize, improving efficiency and costs and customer service.
Today we start by laying out, with brutal frankness, how far the industry has strayed from being “all about the patient.” Next we follow up with how visionaries are moving us to patient-centered care.
Our first guest is Jay Parkinson, MD: innovative, controversial, HelloHealth entrepreneur; featured in Fast Company’s Doctor of the Future and Most Creative People in Healthcare.
Dr. Parkinson describes in detail how (and why) American healthcare today too often fails to serve the patient with good price, quality and service – and how technology can help.
As host Paul Gillin interviews Dr. Parkinson, listen for these insights and think about your own experience getting healthcare:
- Because of insurance middlemen, healthcare providers are not connected to their customers. This causes customer care problems.
- Price and quality are important when providers do speak directly to patients.
- Let’s modernize. 41% of people over 65 use email, but only 20% of doctors do.
There’s more – lots more – in this series opener. Open your mind and listen for the future – for how we can reinvent healthcare, with technology.
This piece starts with a brief excerpt from Parkinson, then the series introduction by host Paul Gillin.
My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-829b619a0e4bc6463fb8c34351213e75}
Podcast: Play in new window
Filed under: Podcasts, customer service, healthcare, scheduling software
2009
New podcast series from TimeTrade: “Reinventing Healthcare with Technology”
TimeTrade Appointment Systems spends a lot of time serving healthcare: as our healthcare solutions page [left] says, online appointment scheduling brings customer service to healthcare and improves efficiency.
In so doing, it advances the cause of patient-centered care, as promoted by thought leaders such as Planetree: “the importance of delivering healthcare in a manner that works best for patients … [healthcare] providers partner with patients and their family members to identify and satisfy the full range of patient needs and preferences.”
To make this point, TimeTrade is about to launch a short series of podcasts titled Reinventing Healthcare with Technology produced by social media guru Paul Gillin. It’s an educational series, mostly not about our customers. Rather, it’s designed to open minds about the real opportunities for this enormous industry to improve customer service using technology that’s common in all other industries.
And when we say customer service, we mean patient service. My 2007 near-death cancer experience left me intimately familiar with what that means, and I’ve become an avid healthcare blogger as e-Patient Dave, so this has personal relevance to me – as it will to all of us, sooner or later.
This series has three parts:
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2009
Five Unconventional Uses of Appointment Scheduling Software
Say ‘appointments’ and people think of doctors and salons. However, more and more industries are coming up with less conventional uses:
- Companies are using appointment scheduling as part of the sales process. For example, Merchant Payment Services (MPS) allows prospects and new visitors to its Web site to immediately schedule a time to learn more about MPS’ products and services.
- Universities are using appointment scheduling to better serve their “customers” – students who are “digital natives.” Students can self-schedule everything from activities at fitness centers to proctored exams.
Continue reading »
2009
Customer Service in Healthcare: It’s Alive!
I have great news: something I complained about turns out to be better than I thought.
Social media played a role, but more important, customer-oriented thinking is alive and thriving in some healthcare institutions.
Continue reading »
Back in July I complained about trying to get an appointment at a clinic outside Boston: they said I didn’t need an appointment, but when I got there I found a long wait. I didn’t name them (I try not to be a mudslinger), but I dropped a clue: I called them “Elsie.”
Filed under: customer service, healthcare
Tagged: customer service, healthcare
2009
Customer Service in Healthcare (not): An All-Too-True Story
Update: A few weeks later the hospital described here contacted me, telling me of their terrific response! Follow-up post: Customer Service in Healthcare: It’s Alive!
Original post:
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What is wrong with these people???
I’ve been having a pain lately, in an arm that shouldn’t be having pain due to a past condition. The orthopedist who took care of my bones said to get an x-ray at some local shop and send her the CD. (She’s happy to save me the time of driving into Boston, and she knows local clinics can make a good x-ray.)
So I called the radiology department of a well-known, highly rated clinic in nearby Burlington – let’s call it Elsie – to make an appointment.
(You know about appointments. They help customers get served quickly and conveniently, and help managers plan their resource utilization. The win-win thing.)
Me: “Hi. My doctor says I should get an x-ray and send her the CD. Can I do that? — Good, I’d like to make an appointment.”
Elsie staff: “Oh, you don’t need an appointment. Just come right in. I mean, you can have one if you want, but you don’t need one.”
Me: “Cool!”
Me to my manager: “I’m going over to Elsie to get an x-ray. They said I can walk right in – should be quick.”
I get there, find my way through their campus (the directions were perfect), and find radiology.
The line to check in goes out into the hall. And at the front of the line, the sign on the desk says the current wait time is 30 minutes.
I look at my watch, conclude I don’t want to wait 45 minutes (or even 30) for a “no appointment needed” x-ray, and leave.
The parking machine wants money for my ticket. I talk to the cashier and the information counter; saying I wasn’t able to get my appointment so I don’t want to pay. (I’ve been there less than 10 minutes.) Both people look at me like I’m crazy and say there’s nothing they can do. A third person says maybe security will validate it. They gladly do.
On the way out I call again.
Me: “I want to make an appointment for tonight.”
Elsie staff: “Oh, you don’t need an appointment. If you want to make one for sometime tomorrow you can.”
Me: “I can’t make one for this evening so I don’t have to wait?”
Elsie: “No…” (sounding rather uncertain about why I’d be asking)
It’s clear to me that my time is not of the least concern to this clinic. I’ve been hearing this about healthcare in general, but I know of places where they do care. (My own hospital is one of them, and I know there are others.)
I just wonder, what on earth is so complicated? I happen to know first-hand that an appointment system for a few workstations is not at all expensive. Instead, they have a line of people out into the hall – sick and injured people, typically – and they cheerfully (genuinely cheerful) say “Oh, you don’t need an appointment.”
Methinks the world of healthcare is (mostly) so wrapped up in its own importance that it doesn’t even occur to them to respect their customers’ time. And that’s gotta change.
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