Patients Are NEVER Customers

Healthcare, an industry genuinely dedicated to helping others, has not only been cheapened but it has been brutishly forced, by any means necessary and at the cost of so much, into just another customer-driven service industry where satisfaction scores are the driving force and healthcare and healthcare workers are to follow. A driving force without feat as that destructive IDIOTOLOGY [sic] has not moved the needle with regard to customer satisfaction but instead has left behind a trail of overwhelming collateral damage and our nation’s greatest silent national crisis.

The belief was, and continues to be today, that by increasing customer satisfaction healthcare’s quality and cost would improve. However, that has not been the case. Because rather focus on variables that DO affect the quality and cost of healthcare, such as outcomes and the safety of healthcare workers and patients, satisfaction surveys focus on wait times, pain management, housekeeping and communication skills, all of which could be argued DO NOT affect the quality or cost of healthcare.

On top of that, those ill-conceived IDIOTOLOGIES [sic], intended to improve healthcare, have only ignited a survival of the fittest race that resulted, of all things, in decreased access to healthcare as volumes of healthcare centers have folded after failing to keep up with the competition. And worse, studies have shown that the most satisfied patients not only spend the most on healthcare and prescriptions but they are also the most likely to be admitted and most likely to die. How is either of those in anyone’s best interest?

The title and presentation are purposefully provocative as both scream that considering patients customers is NEVER right and point to the elephant in healthcare’s exam room—that customer satisfaction scores are NOT about healthcare but about customer retention and profits. And despite studies have shown there is no correlation between satisfaction scores and good healthcare, healthcare administrators and pundits chose not to speak to those facts despite the collateral damage left behind from them chasing satisfaction scores.

Healthcare needs an epic paradigm shift. One that promotes healthcare workers as valuable and trustworthy, supports our collaboration and professionalism, and recognizes us as the good-doers for our desire to help others over concerns that patients may take their business elsewhere. Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” In order for healthcare to create a new future it must rid itself of traditional thinking and this presentation is the stone cast across the water that will create the ripples to taking healthcare back.