Image by George Eastman House via Flickr
There seem to be a lot of people searching for rules for medical offices. I’ve never heard of such rules, but since people are looking for them, I thought I’d write some.
- Medical offices are professional workplaces and staff need to dress, speak, and purport themselves professionally.
- Patients are customers and customer service should be paramount. Give all patients the utmost respect and practice compassion, compassion, compassion.
- If it didn’t get documented (on paper or electronically), it wasn’t done. If it didn’t get documented, you can’t charge for it.
- HIPAA. First of all, please spell it correctly. One P, two As. Secondly, know what it means and make it so!
- Never enter an exam room without knocking.
- Confirm patient identity (name, date of birth, etc.) before giving injections, taking specimens or performing a procedure.
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- Remove very sick or very angry patients from the front desk immediately. Take the sick ones to exam rooms and take the angry ones to the manager’s office.
- Do not use medical jargon with patients. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, they might be too intimidated to ask.
- Wash your hands. Often. No matter what you do in the practice.
- The office should be CLEAN, fresh and up-to-date. No dying plants, no magazines more than 9 months old, no dust bunnies behind the doors, no stained seating or carpets.
- Train staff to apologize, and to apologize sincerely.
- Complaints from patients and staff need to be addressed in 2 weeks or less.
- Medical equipment is to be maintained and tested annually for safety and performance.
- Once a medical record is finalized, the only changes to a paper record are single line strike-throughs with corrected information and initials, or addendums. There are no changes to electronic records, only addendums.
- Patients don’t understand insurance. Be the expert.
- Shred confidential practice paperwork and patient-identified information on-site.
- Keep medications (including sample medications) in locked cabinets and use a good inventory system to log the use and replacement of stock.
- Strive to meet patients at their communication level. Use graphics, translated materials and interpretive services when needed.
- Don’t expect patients to be on time for their appointments when the provider isn’t.
- Don’t make copies from copies.
- Give everyone the benefit of the doubt. There’s always more to the story. Okay, this is really a rule for life in general, but it works in medical offices too.
Leave a comment and tell me what rule you would add.
For more medical office rules, read “Ten Golden Rules for Your Medical Office Staff.”
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Loved the article about rules for medical practices. Under the one about HIPAA, I would add the caveat to remember that virtually every word spoken in a physician’s office is overheard by someone.
Don’t allow you staff to call patients sweetie, honey, sugar, darling and all other affectionate terms. They are Mr. Smith or Ms. Jones. I have never understood why people do this, very irritating to most patients.
you can be friendly in your actions w/o having to resort to callin a patient by something other than their name.
Hi Dave,
This is an excellent addition!
I do remember, however, one practice where I instructed the staff not to use patients’ first names. The staff came back to me and said several patients were offended because the staff stopped calling them by their first names! Sometimes you just can’t win.
I agree with you 100%. Staff should err on the side of being more professional, not less.
Thanks for your comment,
Mary Pat
[...] For more medical office rules, read “21 Common Sense Rules for Medical Offices.” [...]
[...] 21 Common Sense Rules for Medical Offices [...]
[...] Pat Whaley, who is certified in health care management and blogs at Manage My Practice, offered a list last year of “21 Common-Sense Rules for Medical [...]
[...] For more medical office rules, read “21 Common Sense Rules for Medical Offices.” [...]