Healthcare as a customer service relationship?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, today, my work had an interesting conference. It was required and I initially rolled my eyes at the topic: “Trust” After many years of various educational theories and “ethics classes” (I’m of the firm believe that you cannot teach ethics), I’ve become rather cynical about these things. This conference surprised me though - it turned out to be a rather interesting round table discussion between nurses, social workers, residents and docs with a lot of audience participation from all of the above.

At one point, a resident raised his hand and told a story that got me thinking. He related a call night in the ICU. He got a rather routine call, regarding a child’s g-tube that had fallen out. A g-tube is a feeding tube inserted into the stomach - critically ill children often need them for various reasons. It was the middle of the night, and the people responsible for replacement of the g-tube weren’t in the hospital. The child wasn’t in any immediate danger, and the team decided to replace the tube in the morning. At this point, the dad flipped out, and apparently ranted on about how he was the customer, he was paying them, this was unacceptable, yadda yadda yadda. The resident was basically asking how do you respond to this assertion - that the patients are in fact, customers, and the healthcare industry exists to satisfy them.

The round table didn’t really have a great answer. It’s a tough question and hard to verbalize. I don’t believe the doctor-patient relationship is equivalent to the customer-business relationship for dozens of reasons. But, I was just curious about how prevalent this belief was.

Please note - I’m not asking about whether the dad was right or wrong, or critiquing his actions. Parents with a critically ill child are often under extreme stress. I get that and as long as the situation doesn’t become physically violent, I’m inclined to cut them a lot of slack with regards to anger and verbal abuse. Your child could be dying, you don’t need to stick to Emily Post rules of etiquette.

So, are patients customers? why?

2

Yes, of course they are. They (or someone on their behalf) are paying you for services. You’re right that it’s not quite like other customer/business relations.

3

If ethics cannot be taught, how does anyone learn them?

A patient is a customer of the medical facility, but sometimes there are decisions made by people trained in the medical arts which the customer is just going to have to trust.

4

The people that come up to the counter at the pharmacy are our patients, but they are also our customers. Sometimes these two roles conflict with each other. We are responsible for our patients well-being, doing what is right for them, and acting within the realm of our profession. However, as our customer, we need to do what we can to please them, to increase the amount of money we get from them, and to make sure they come back again.

IMHO, they are our patient first, and we need to treat them as such before anything else. But they are also our customers, and we need to treat them as we would like to be treated as customers… As long as it doesn’t conflict with our primary role of being healthcare providers to our patients.

5

It’s very different from a pure customer relationship. Doctors provide expertise and judgment that patients do not have, so (a) patients have to trust doctors and (b) doctors have an obligation to act in the patient’s best interest even if it runs counter to the doctor’s immediate personal interest. This is especially important when the patient doesn’t know any better.

This is true of any business relationship in which the seller has expertise that the buyer lacks.