Do you give feedback to your healthcare providers? (Ruthann Russo)

Do you take the opportunity to give direct feedback to your healthcare providers? As Ken Blanchard says in his book Management of Organizational Behavior: Leading Human Resources, “feedback is the breakfast of champions.” We conducted interviews and collected data from almost 2,000 healthcare consumers. Most consumers had both positive and negative experiences with their health care providers. Most of their complaints were specific to a doctor—something he or she did or did not do, something they said, or the way they said it. In most cases, it was clear that these patients were still upset about the encounter and the way the physician handled it. In each case, when asked if they told the doctor how they felt, they said no. Perhaps if they would have given the feedback and had the physician attempt to resolve it or work with them on the issue, their feeling about the encounter would have been different.

At the risk of minimizing the importance of health care service complaints, it is, in many ways, the basic customer service scenario. The customer shows up at the return counter fuming about the broken blender they purchased a week ago. If the person behind the counter listens to everything the customer has to say, apologizes, makes good on the blender and then gives them an additional coupon for their next purchase, this customer may actually have a better view of the store than if they had not purchased the broken blender. Perhaps if we took the time (and had the nerve, in some cases) to provide specific feedback to our physicians, not only would the care improve, but so would our attitude towards it.

Other books by Ken Blanchard.