I was
recently catching up on a backlog of reading. I get a lot of journals and
magazines in the mail, and when things are busy, I toss them in a pile on a
corner of my desk. Recently, the pile was so high it threatened to topple over
onto my little dog, Cassie. (Cassie is sometimes in the office with me, and
when she is, she sits atop a quilt on top of my cage of a desk. I call it a
cage, because I actually have three desks in a "U" shape with just one, tiny
opening on one side. Not my idea of good office configuration, believe me.)
Anyway,
in this pile that was endangering Cassie, I noticed an article form the
December 2007 issue of Current Psychiatry: "Help Your
Patients Keep Appointments." I read with interest what the professors/authors thought
would help increase the likelihood that I would show up for an appointment.
They
suggest "clever" ideas like:
- "Get a cell phone number."
- "Call and remind them the
night before."
- "Ask for a commitment."
- "Offer less frequent but more
regular appointments."
- "Express your concern."
I read
these things, and they just make me (more) crazy. It seems like providers just
don't understand how consumers think, act or behave.
If providers
want us to show up for our appointments, what about focusing on important
things like:
- Making sure their 15 minutes
with us has some meaning.
- Treating us with respect and
being fully engaged for those 15 minutes.
- Focusing on recovery goals during
our session so they can ensure that the treatment plan has some relevance
to what we care about.
- Using a measurement-based
approach (e.g., the QIDS, PHQ-9 or, better yet, the Sheehan Disability Scale)
at every session so that we both have a real sense of how things
are progressing instead of asking us "how we feel."
- Allowing us to speak for more
than 10 seconds before interrupting us. (According to research, that's the
average amount of time it takes for doctors to interrupt consumers during
appointments. If they let us say all we need to, on average we need just
two minutes.)
If the
interaction between us and our providers has value from our perspective,
I think we're much more likely to make those appointments. More than half the
time, I come away from my doctor's appointment (which I never miss) feeling
like it was a huge waste of time and money. For what? From my perspective,
nothing of real value was accomplished. It's my commitment to myself and my
wellness that gets me there each time.
So,
instead of asking the question, "How can we help consumers keep appointments?"
doctors need to ask, "How can I make this appointment have value so the
consumer understands they're not wasting their time or money to be here?"
I bet
then we wouldn't be no-shows.
What
makes for a quality, valuable interaction between you and your provider?
