Customer Service in a Healthcare Setting, Essay Example

Improving customer service in health care is an important component in enhancing the quality of health care service in USA. Treating patients with respect is an initial step towards improving customer service in health care. One way to treat patients with respect is through treating them as individuals rather than as merely numbers. David C. Hammer, the author of the article, “Adapting Customer Service to Consumer-Directed Health Care”, proposes an effective way to start treating patients as human beings rather than numbers. In his article, Hammer advocates patients’ access to medical billing and medical procedures and provides evidence that this strategy has proved successful in increasing customer satisfaction. Hammer writes: “For the average hospital, just thinking of patients as consumers represents a significant shift from the traditional model of treating them as individuals whose bills are paid by someone else. Today, successful customer relations are nearly as important as the quality and value of care that a hospital provides.” According to Hammer, treating patients with more respect is the key. By not just caring about making money through providing health care services to patients but actually caring about the patients’ well being and satisfaction, hospitals are treating patients as human beings. This strategy has also proved profitable because the hospitals are making more money as a result of it.

In final analysis, David C. Hammer’s article is very well written and easy to understand for an average reader. In his piece, Hammer is very optimistic about this new method of involving patients in their heath care costs through the use of the internet. He is also very supportive of involving patients in their medical procedures by giving them information about these procedures through online access. In my opinion, Hammer does a good job of convincing the reader that this is an effective way to improve customer service in health care. However, on the other hand, Hammer’s article begs the question: are there any other ways to improve customer service in health care? In other words, what else can be done? It is important to mention that, as a result of the successful implementation of the new strategy, customer service representatives spend talking to patients. In my opinion, this is not a good thing because reducing real time interaction between patients and customer service representatives may actually backfire. Ironically, through the above mentioned impersonal relationship, the patients may end up feeling that they are faceless money making tools rather than respected patients.