5 Things Patients Expect in their Doctors Office

Are you losing your revenue and patients? If the answer is yes, you need to make some serious changes in the way you are running your practice. According to a survey conducted on 1,019 adult patients by Cleveland Clinic, waiting for a long time at a doctor’s office was the top issue faced by nearly half of the respondents. While 11% said they get agitated when the doctor doesn’t give them time, six per cent respondents expressed serious annoyance for not being remembered by their doctor.

Here are the top five things that patients expect in their doctor’s office:

1. Time management
   No patient likes to sit in the waiting room for hours. Not having to wait for a long time is the topmost expectation every patient has in a doctor’s office. It is important to run a practice that values a patient’s time.
2. Easy payment options
   Patients expect easy payment options at their doctor’s office including, debit cards, credit cards, checks, wire transfer, and so on. By giving them different options to pay, doctors can ensure timely payments for rendered services.
3. Access to records
   A well-run medical practice will always provide access of records to the patients so that they don’t have to wait for weeks for the test results or keep reminding the office for the same. It is important for doctors to give patients the access to their health data when required.
4. No cancellations or rescheduled appointments
   Patients don’t expect regular cancellations or rescheduling of appointments. If this happens too often, they prefer not to follow up with their doctors again. So, it is important to ensure that appointments are cancelled or rescheduled as less as possible.
5. Efficient front-desk staff
   Patients expect efficient, well-behaved front-desk staff at their doctor’s office. They may like the quality of care you provide, but if your front-desk employees don’t deal with them properly before or after the appointment, there are strong chances they won’t come back for another appointment.

If you don’t want to lose patients or have the revenue cycle of your practice affected, make sure you are meeting the above-mentioned expectations of your patients. You will have to hire trained and experienced front-desk staff to ensure that appointment scheduling, cancellations and re-scheduling are handled in the right manner. The billing department will have to be spruced up to ensure that you get paid for every service you have performed. This will give you sufficient time to concentrate on every patient.

In case monetary constraints or shortage of skilled staff is a hindrance, outsourcing can be the best solution for your practice. By hiring companies like MedicalBillersandCoders.com, practices can eliminate the challenges related to billing, coding, claims submission, HIPAA compliance, and so on.

MBC has the largest team of certified and experienced billers and coders who have been offering effective billing solutions to 42 specialties across the US. By outsourcing medical billing needs to MBC, practices have been able to concentrate on patient engagement, giving more time to each patient and training the front-desk staff on how to manage appointments in an organized manner.

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Published By - Medical Billers and Coders
Published Date - Oct-01-2014 Back