Cosmetic Medicine = Patient Complaints

In 2010, a Customer Experience Report showed that poor quality and rude customer service is the main reason why a customer leaves a businss. I'ts the same deal for your clinic. It is not about price, instead it all boils down to proper customer service.

Everyone's who's worked in any cosmetic practice has dealt with the overly-demanding, never happy patient, many of whom are particularly hard and abusive of your staff. The way you deal with these patients can have a pretty dramatic effect on how many headaches you have to deal with, and how productive your team is. (You'll also lighten the potential downside of any potential medical liabilities since patients who like their physicians are much less likely to sue.)

Here are some tips in dealing with irate patients and complaints in general:

Compose yourself. As Forbes puts it, Remember, the customer is not angry with you, they are displeased with the performance of your treatment or (most commonly) the quality of the service you provide. Your personal feelings are beside the point.Think about the situation positively.

Listen well. Give your complete focus to your customer, and make sure they know it. Allow your client to tell her side of the story. Do not interrupt her while he narrates his side of the story. Be an active listener.

Be emphatic. Your body language should communicate that you understand why your patient is upset. Empathize with her. Respect and understanding go a long way toward smoothing things over.

Apologize. The legitimacy of the customer's complaint does not matter. If you want to keep your patient and difuse the situation,  you will need to apologize for the problem that they have or perceive to be having. A simple and straightforward "I'm sorry" can do miracles in diffusing a customer's emotional rant.

Present a Solution. When you have the solution to the client's problem, tell her that you would correct the situation immediately. If you can't take care of it immediately, ask for your patients opinion on how she wants to address the situation. Allow her to identify what will make her happy. Work a solution together. Explain the steps that you are going to do to fix your patient's problem.

Take Action. It is important that you do what you have promised your client. This is crucial in fixing your relationship with unhappy patients. 

You can always go beyond expectations. You may also give out gift certificates or coupons to "compensate" for your client's inconvenience. You can make a follow-up call a few days later to your client to make sure that she is happy with the resolution.

Of course, experience is the best teacher. Every encounter with a client is a unique one but every experience is a great chance to improve your relationship.

Each complaint is an insight for you to improve your business better. Proper resolution of complaints will surely increase client loyalty.

Read more on:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thesba/2013/08/02/7-steps-for-dealing-with-angry-customers/

http://www.restaurantdoctor.com/articles/complaint.html#ixzz3YqYaWMQZ

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/unhappy-customers.htm

Managing Patient Expectations

Are you making patients more attractive, or just making them think that they are?

In a recent small study, 50 people were asked to rate the appearance of people who had undergone facial surgery. The bottom-line: Surgical intervention shaved a few years off perceived age but did almost nothing to boost patients’ overall attractiveness.  

What’s at issue is patients’ expectations, said study lead author Dr. Joshua Zimm, an attending surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital and Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Institute of North Shore-LIJ Health System in New York City.

“When we’re doing this kind of surgery I’m telling patients that they’ll look fresher, more energetic and less tired, and we have some data in the literature that indicates you will look younger, as we found,” Zimm said. “But clearly I cannot say that they will look more attractive.”

Clarifying why someone elects to have cosmetic surgery is as important for the physician as it is for the patient. “The best motivation for cosmetic surgery is a healthy sense of vanity—emphasis on the word healthy,” says Timothy A. Miller, M.D., chief of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at UCLA. “There is nothing wrong with vanity, but when it becomes obsessive or the patient sees it as an avenue to changing the direction of his or her life, it can be a problem.” 

What patient doesn’t want to look their best? Most patients have very realistic expectations. But some patient expectations can stretch beyond reason. “If you expect cosmetic surgery to turn you into a movie star, you’re bound to be disappointed,” Dr. Miller says. “Also don’t count on surgery to save a rocky relationship, gain a promotion or improve your social life.” 

Maybe physicians in this space should refer to the hairstylists adage, “We use scissors, not magic wands.”

SIMON Says: “Run Forrest Run!”

Saying ‘No’ to Prospective Cosmetic Medical Patients

Certainly, everyone is entitled and should have access to cosmetic medical and surgical services. However, depending on your particular risk tolerance, there are certain times when you might want to just 'pass' on treating a patient.  Knowing which patients to sidestep is a gray art and is frequently based on hunches and ‘gut’ feelings.  This subtle impression, as described in Malcolm Gladwell’s book 'Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking', is correct more often than not.  However, there are more objective guidelines available to help decide whether or not to dance with a particular patient. Several of these tips have been developed and expounded upon in numerous papers by Dr. Mark Gorney and in the book 'The Patient and the Plastic Surgeon' by Dr. Robert Goldwyn.  Consider running for the hills if:

• The patient is a SIMON – single,immature, male, overly expectant, and narcissistic.  Even worse if they answer to SIMON-SLAP (SIMON + still lives at parents). 
• You don’t click with the patient – or just plain dislike them
• The patient is critical of previous physicians but thinks you hung the moon.
• The patient is rude to your staff.
• The patient demands a guarantee.
• You are asked to do something you can’t deliver.
• Anyone in a hurry to have surgery – gotta do it now!
• The surgiholic patient.
• Patients wanting procedures because they are prodded by friends or family members.
• The out-of-town patient who has to bolt before you are comfortable with them leaving.
• The patient who is vague, indecisive and leaves the driving to you.

Unfortunately, patients don’t walk into your office with a label on their shirt saying ‘I’m going to be a real problem’.  Listen to the voices in your head and apply the above principles.  Cosmetic medicine is supposed to be fun – don’t let a rogue patient slip through the cracks and haunt you.  It just isn’t worth it!

Managing Patient Expectations Part 2 - Botox Training MD

Read Managing Patient Expectations Part 1

Managing patient expectations is a learned skill but one that you have to master in order to run a competitive and profitable cosmetic practice.

Be aware of is patients who are complaining about previous providers. It's a potential indicator that this client might be a difficult client to deal with.

Clearly if someone is continually bashing another doctor (provided that the didn't do something that caused obvious harm) and they're angry with that doctors and his staff, that's going to put me on guard.

Now, there are situations where a patient's anger is appropriate.

I have a patient right now, that for years, went to another provider, and when she came to me and told me that she's switching providers, I did become a little alarmed right out of the bat. But once I got to know her my misgivings were removed. She had been going to this other physician for years and years and years, and she was upset with him because of the treatment she received for the previous several injections... but she attributed it to the front desk since the clinic had became very busy and impersonal. So I think you have to look at each patient individually. She was legitimate with her complaint and we have a great relationship but there are others.. If a patient is very, very angry, and constantly bashing a former provider and complaining about results you need to be aware, because you could be the next one on their hit list.

I think it's important to take as much time as you can so that you're comfortable and the client's comfortable. To simply make a decision that you're not going to treat that patient and you are now wasting your time, sitting in that room with the patient is the bad approach because then the patient's gonna be angry.

As far as I know, I've never sent anybody out of the office angry because I declined the treatment.

I really make the decision very rapidly as to whether I'm going to treat them or not. I think with time you develop that. I know within the first minute or so if I'm going to treat or won't, but I spend the same amount of time sometimes for both of them - the person I'm going to treat versus the person I'm not going to treat -  because to make that person angry is not what I want to do for a number of obvious reasons.

Often, I can convert them into doing something else that's realistic or telling their friends that's I'm genuine person.  I listen to exactly what they want and I try to understand what they want to have done. Sometimes it's a very small,small correction they're asking for and I don't think I can alleviate it... a very tiny line that I can barely see. So I listen to them, I give them a mirror, I have them point it to me. I try to totally understand what they are pointing up. And most of the time, I can see what it is they want me to correct.

However, if I don't think I can correct it and I think that it's unrealistic, I don't tell them: "That's unrealistic", I explain to them the limitations of the product and the scientific discussion. This product is made for this procedure, not unfortunately for what you want to have done and what you want to have done, I'm unable to correct this in the way that you're asking for.

Some patien'ts don't accept that and will respond with..  "But you're a plastic surgeon or you're an aesthetic physician, this is what you do." So then you have to educate them more with, "Unfortunately we don't have all the tools available". (The 'no magic wand' defense.)

So, even if you've decided that you're not going to treat a specific patient, I think it's really important to spend time with them, see what they want you to do and have them leave happy.

Managing Patient Expectations Part 1 - Botox Training MD

Managing patient expectations are crucial to the success of any aesthetic practice.

If you are not 100 % on board with understanding and dealing with patient expectations, I believe it's going to be difficult to be successful with any aesthetic practice.

The way that I manage patient expectations starts from the initial correspondence with my clinic. My front desk staff typically will notify me if anything out of the ordinary is discussed on the phone at a new patient's consultation request. So, if for instance, they have a request that's perhaps out of the ordinary or they're perhaps not comfortable with the way the conversation went, they'll let me know so I'll have right off the bat, I'll have a little understanding that maybe it'll take a little bit more time with describing what can be done or perhaps the mode where I am not going to perform a procedure.

It's just as important and more difficult sometimes to actually refuse to perform a procedure than it is to do a procedure, have an unsatisfactory outcome, and recover from that. So I want to make that kind of clear again that if somebody presents to you that you do not feel comfortable treating, it may be more difficult to refuse that treatment than it is to actually deal with somebody who develops a complication or unsatisfactory result. However, interestingly enough, if you take the time to explain to a person why you don't feel you can't perform what they want, it can actually turn into a positive experience in the form of her/him recommending other patients to you. Or maybe that person selecting a different treatment that you offer. So, again, we start off right out of the bat, by making sure that our front desk is well aware that I need to be informed of anything out of the ordinary when a patient calls or comes in for the first time, not matter what it is.

There are two things I'm looking for. Out of the ordinary being number one, and number two would be behavior that is really not acceptable social behavior, like anger or overly demanding behavior. I like to know that too because if somebody is angry or demanding with the front desk in an unacceptable manner, then that is a clue that perhaps their behavior will be the same after I treat them.

If you're in this field long enough, you're going to hear some strange requests.

We get calls not too infrequently, once or twice a year from clients that are in the process of changing from a male to a female or a female to a male and they would like to have some, not only surgical procedures but some nonsurgical procedures like Botox or Dysport and a filler like Restylane or Juvederm. Typically, they are often required to have psychiatric evaluation before they undergo the actual transgender operation. So I've had a few instances where I had to contact their psychiatrist or actually put them in contact with a psychiatrist before treating them. So that's a little out of the ordinary.

And the other out of the ordinary are extremes of age. Teenagers calling for Restylane to augment their lips or Botox and knowing how to deal with that. And that would simply be... they have to be over 18. I mean you have to understand the..or appreciate the indications for Botox and it's right on the label.

Read: Managing Patient Expecations Part 2

About: Marc S Scheiner MD is a plastic surgeon who teaches Botox and filler injection technques to physicians and clinicians through Botox Training MD and his 14 credit CME two-day hand's on seminars.