How to Handle Patient Complaints

In today's video, we're going to discuss how to handle patient complaints. So this is something that happens to all of us in healthcare. We can't make everyone happy all the time, even when we really, truly are trying our very best to take care of all our patients. Things will come up, we see things differently, or there could be miscommunication. Stay tuned to learn how to best handle any patient complaints in your practice.

Hi, I'm Dr. Annie DePasquale. I'm the owner and founder of Collaborating Docs. We help entrepreneurial nurse practitioners find amazing collaborating physicians. Today we're going to talk all about how to handle when a client is not happy with the service. It happens to all of us, even the very best of us trying. We have a five step plan on how to handle complaints.

First, we always want to listen, empathize with the patient, inquire, act on it, and then document it. So let's go through these individually.

What are we talking about when we say listen, it means if you're actively getting the complaint, you're going to stop and give your full, complete attention to the patient. Make sure that your staff does the same thing. And you do not start explaining it all away. You are in receive mode, you are listening, you are taking it in, you are looking at them. You are not checking your phone. You are totally in the moment, all eyes, all ears on the person talking to you.

Next, you are going to empathize with them. You truly feel for them. You apologize for any inconvenience. Again, you're not pointing the blame, you're not explaining it away. You try to imagine what it's like to be in their shoes and how this could have happened, how you would've felt if it had happened to you. So you can truly relate to them and express your sincerest apologies. Then you're going to inquire, figure out a bit more about what went wrong. How could this be prevented in the future? Show to the patient that you are truly interested in fixing this problem. You're taking it seriously. You really, truly care.

Then you're going to act upon it. So, you know, I'm hearing you. I understand you didn't get your lab results when you expected to get them. You had been promised them Friday, you didn't get them by Monday. You had to come to the office on Tuesday. It was very frustrating. Let me make sure you have your lab results. I'm so sorry this happened to you and thank you for bringing this up. There was a glitch in our automation of our EMR. It's been fixed. Whatever the reason may have been, it's been addressed.

And then follow up, just to be polite. Close the circle maybe in two days. Call them. This is more of an internal check to show the patient how we resolved your problem but also internally to the clinic. So I know that was rather brief, but just keep in mind that you always want to listen clearly, empathize, apologize, inquire, get to the bottom of what happened, act on it, fix it, and then go ahead and document for future reference.

All right, I hope you find this helpful and I wish you best of luck when you get that patient complaint. Hopefully they're obviously few and far between, but at least you'll know how to handle it when it comes your way. All right, take care.

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Dr. Annie DePasquale is a Board-certified Family Medicine physician and an ardent supporter of Nurse Practitioners looking to start their own practices.  

Collaborating Docs was founded in 2020 by Dr. Annie because she first-hand saw an unmet need of her NP colleagues who needed a supervising physician to practice independently.

When Dr. Annie realized how hard it is for NPs to find a collaborating physician, she knew she had to do something. The hoops that nurse practitioners had to jump through to start practicing were too exhausting for anyone to handle alone.

Dr. Annie benefited greatly from the mentorship of NPs throughout her career, especially when she was a green new grad, so she is very committed to giving back to the community that helped her so much.