Happy staff key to patient satisfaction
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The best way to ensure patients are satisfied is to build a better culture among a practice’s staff, according to a presentation at Real World Ophthalmology.
Vance Thompson, MD, said over his career, he has learned that leaders need to ask themselves how they can transform the future of team and patient care.
“The answer to the question is really rather simple but also hard to execute,” he said. “It’s by how we care and treat each other.”
While it is critical that a practice does the right thing for patients, culturally, the team needs to come first. Thompson said if the team feels loved and cared for, it creates an environment where the patients feel the same.
With so many ophthalmic practice options available, goods and services are not enough, Thompson said.
“If you really want to differentiate your practice, you want to create an experience around it that’s so memorable that the team that’s working there says, ‘I love working here, and I love taking good care of each other,’” he said. “The patients that come in say, ‘I love how they treat each other. I love how they treat me. I trust them to do my eye surgery, and I’m going to tell my friends.’”
Thompson said he tries to build a positive culture by buying books for his staff and helping them study to ensure they have confidence in themselves to do their jobs. He also encourages them to call out good service by their colleagues.
Another tool Thompson uses to build a positive environment in his practice is a set of questions he asks himself to help gauge how he treats his staff and how they perceive that treatment. The questionnaire asks if he cares about their personal lives, if he smiles and says hello in the morning, and if he is putting their joy over profit when he closes the office. If he cares about his team, then he would do those things, Thompson said.
“This last question is the most important,” Thompson said. “If my team answers these questions for me, would they say I treat these situations like I say I do? These are the kind of things that will get your team so fired up about working with you.”
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Thompson V. Changes I made that increased patient satisfaction. Presented at: Real World Ophthalmology; April 2, 2022 (virtual meeting).
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