Can't Customer Service and Healthcare Go Together?

I know; I’m a stickler for good customer service. Change that … great customer service. When Saturn, the car company, was well-known for being a different kind of car company, our philosophy was NOT ‘meet’ customer expectations; it was ‘exceed’ customer expectations. It was all about customer ENTHUSIASM. Maybe that was so ingrained in me that today I still expect that type of treatment. So often, my expectations are unmet.

I’ve come to expect poor treatment from companies (don’t get me started on my recent experience with Time Warner Cable where I spent almost an hour on the phone with technical support and still couldn’t get the problem resolved.)

I still do expect some kind of special care within the healthcare field. After all, don’t people who are in healthcare do it because they want to help people? Don’t they realize that most of us who are visiting doctors are doing so because we hurt or have some kind of issue? Shouldn’t empathy and customer service be part of their training? Don’t I (and the millions of others in pain) deserve to be treated with respect, consideration and good service?

In the past couple weeks, I’ve dealt with three different medical practices – a primary care office, a gynecologist and a pain clinic. I’m not talking about the doctors; I’m talking about the phone calls with front office personnel. I have changed my phone number numerous times with my doctor’s office, but it doesn’t ever get changed on ALL their records so, for instance, the referral coordinator calls an old number and I never get the message. Geez. The pain clinic says to have my primary care office send a referral and they (the pain clinic) will call me to set an appointment after they review my information. After not hearing from anyone, I call my primary care office who says they sent the referral a week ago and left a message (at my old phone number). Then I call the pain clinic who says they’ve been waiting for my call to set an appointment. What? I was waiting on them as they requested. Double geez. So, in pain, I’ll get to see the pain clinic in three weeks (the first available appointment) where I will have to pee in a cup to prove I take Rx pain medication and nothing else.

I guess I should be thrilled – only three weeks and no one yelled at me … yet. Now, that’s customer service … in today’s world. I don’t sound jaded or frustrated, do I?