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PARE DOWN YOUR POLICIES

WHY YOUR MANUAL NEEDS ONLY A FEW SENTENCES ON HOW TO HANDLE PATIENTS

I’VE GONE to the same dentist for more than 20 years. And in all the years I’ve gone, I’ve never had this happen — I left my wallet at home.

“Your charge for today, Dr. Gerber, is $285. Would you like to pay with cash, check or charge?” was met with an embarrassed, “Uh oh, how about if I call you later with my credit card? I think I left my wallet at home. I feel terrible about that, but you know it will be taken care of.”

“Of course; that’s fine. Don’t stress over it.”

WHAT IS YOUR POLICY?

The above is most likely how nearly all of you would hopefully handle an analogous situation with one of your established patients. But, what if this patient was new? What if you only saw this patient once two years ago? What about a patient you’ve seen for 10 years who is chronically late paying his or her bills?

So, what’s your policy in cases like this, and how do you handle those cases that will invariably fall on the edges of your policy? How about this example? Your policy is to charge a $20 fee for returned checks. A long-time patient, who has never had problems paying you, bounces a check. When he receives the notice for the $20 charge, he irately calls and screams at your receptionist, “Seriously? I’ve literally spent thousands of dollars in your practice and the ONE time I slip up you ding me for $20?”

When a staff member puts that patient on hold (first problem) and comes to you with that question, what’s your policy?

DON’T LOOK IT UP

Hopefully, it’s not to tell your staff member to go look it up in your policy and procedures manual. Instead, I’d ask you to take 20 steps backwards and examine what your big picture goals, culture and values are. Do you claim to be a patient-centric practice? Are your goals based on increasing profitability, and do those two things work in opposition to one another?

Absolutely not. My advice is the only policy to ingrain in your staff is, “When things like this come up, use your judgement, and do so with the underpinnings of our practice culture and values.” Sounds vague, I agree. But if your values and culture are etched in limestone, it’s not vague at all. For all the above examples, you only need one policy — execute according to your culture. Period.

A patient-centric, profit-driven practice leader readily realizes that in nearly all the above cases, the long-term view of retaining and growing a population of happy patients trumps the immediacy and possible economic loss of these one-off situations. Allowing a long-time great patient to pay later or immediately reversing a $20 bounced check charge isn’t something that needs to be noted in your policy manual. Instead, your policy should be that you will take amazing care of your best patients — and leave it to your staff to determine what is “amazing” and who is “best!” You simply cannot have a written policy for every potential situation that may arise in your practice. But, you can have a culture that allows a, “Take care of the patient at the point of contact” policy that is incredibly easy to implement!

FOCUS ON THE MASSES

For the naysayers who expect patients will take advantage of this, I can tell you historically that is just not the case. But should it happen, that patient is no longer a “great” patient and should politely be dismissed from your practice.

Have your policies reflect your culture, and focus on the masses — not the outliers. If the “How to handle patients” section of your policy manual is more than a few sentences long, pare it down to make your life, your staff’s lives and your patients’ lives happier. OM

GARY GERBER, O.D., is the president of the Power Practice, a company specializing in making optometrists more profitable. Learn more at www.powerpractice.com, or call Dr. Gerber at (888) 356-4447.