Dismissing patient complaints can stifle your practice’s success. To learn how ignoring patient complaints can hurt your practice, continue reading.
As a healthcare professional, it is nearly impossible to please everyone, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try. Common complaints received by dental practices, hospitals, or other healthcare industries may be regarding communication issues, long wait times, or rude interactions. Many medical professionals often disregard such complaints, believing that they are unavoidable or that the patient is simply being unreasonable. Doing so, however, could harm your practice’s success. To learn about how ignoring patient complaints can hurt your practice, continue reading.
Ignoring complaints hurts patient relationships
One of the biggest negative impacts that ignoring patient complaints can have on your practice is hurting patient relationships. By continuously ignoring patient complaints, you send the message that your practice doesn’t really care about its patients and their experience. As a result, patients may start to feel undervalued and search for a different practice.
If a patient is complaining, the relationship is already damaged, but that doesn’t mean it’s irreparable. By responding to patient complaints, you have the opportunity to resolve the issue and mend the relationship. As such, you can avoid losing patients to competing practices that are more attentive.
Ignoring complaints stifles growth
Patients who make a complaint give you the opportunity to improve by alerting you to ways that you have been unwittingly falling short. While nobody likes to receive complaints, they can be a blessing in disguise. Most unhappy patients simply leave without saying a word, allowing key issues to continue to go unnoticed. By speaking up, patients who complain allows your practice to improve. Ignoring patient complaints wastes this valuable opportunity for growth and prevents your practice from improving.
Ignoring patient complaints hurts your practice’s reputation
Complaints, especially in the form of online reviews, travel fast. If you don’t respond to complaints quickly, your practice’s reputation could take a serious hit. After all, nobody wants to trust their health to a practice that doesn’t appear to care enough about their patient’s satisfaction to respond to their complaints. As such, it’s imperative for your practice’s reputation that you address complaints as soon as possible. Doing so will help resolve the issue before negative word regarding your practice spreads.