Ep. 118: Front Desk Marketing - Part 2: Navigating High-Pressure Situations

Patient Care Marketing Pros (00:00)
Hey, what's up everybody? Nick here, Michael here, walk-ins welcome. That's what you're listening to. We're all about helping you grow your medical practice. We want you to get more patients. We want you to deliver better care. We want to help you retain those clients and have repeat visits. And we want to help you scale your clinic. What's up, Michael? Yeah, and I'm excited because this is part two of our pastor series. That's right. Yeah, our pastor series. So we're going through a series. This is the second of three parts, all about your front desk marketing.

And you know, sometimes marketing is very practical and it's very easy to understand that I'm marketing by asking for a review or asking for a referral or running an ad or you know, it's very obvious. But sometimes marketing is passive. Sometimes marketing is just doing the right thing and garnering respect through those processes. Yeah, right. So today we're going to be talking about high stress situations.

navigating high pressure situations. I said high stress, but high pressure situations. I mean, they kind of go hand in hand. If you feel the pressure, you feel the stress. Well, so it's been my experience, Michael, that the more pressure I'm under, the more opportunity I have to shine, but also the more mistakes that I'm capable of making. Well, and I think too, I think there are certain mindsets that benefit from pressure. Like they perform at their peak under pressure.

But now I'm rethinking my statement of pressure and stress is the same thing. They're really not. Pressure is an opportunity to succeed. Stress means you've already lost and now you're under stress. There's definitely a situation where they like you're crawling out of a hole. And we're going to talk about some of that today because high pressure and then stress that ensues from high pressure situations is a great opportunity. Like I said, you have an opportunity to shine and build that patient for life.

Yeah, or you have an opportunity to get that one star review that's coming soon after they leave. Yeah. And that is so real. And we have some clients that they must be under high pressure. We have some that just leads or I mean, reviews are a thing. Oh, it's a real thing. But kicking us right out is like, help me identify a few high stress, high pressure situations right out of the gate. I'll start a freaking pandemic.

That's a high stress, high pressure. That was just a high volume situation, right? Like there was no, we were actually have, he had a meeting with one of our local urgent cares that we worked with. And he was talking about, you know, Shout out to Dr. Junkins. Yeah, Dr. Junkins, he's been on this podcast. So he was talking about back in the COVID days, he had to move hours from shutting down at 10 PM at night to 8 PM because

that was so thick with patients, his people wouldn't get home till midnight and then they're right back out again by seven in the morning. He's like, it wasn't the way to live. And so like he had to recognize that and make adjustments. So sometimes, you know, these high pressure situations can be, you know, it's the result of the environment that we're in. And other times it's just a result of bad process. And then you just let it happen.

Right. You know that I've seen that before. Well, so that's another one, though. Like, let's talk about that. We just talked about like a major pandemic that we may or may not see again in our lifetime. Right. I hope not. I hope not to. Our millennials, we've seen too much. I feel like Bill Gates is planning the next one, though, if you ever do a talk. Like we were in middle school, high school for 9 11. We were graduating, going to college in 2008. Then the pandemic happened. It's just like.

Every 10 years something something's going on and so you didn't get the benefit and pleasure of living in the 80s and 90s like now we hear about this wonderful music that's now 40 years old. Enjoyed it. Alright, so you just brought up a good a good thought. We talked about, you know, kind of a peak like Event that caused all kinds of pressure right that you really can't control. You just simplified something though that a lot of

clinics don't have in place and that's processes and procedures or at least they're not readily available to their team. Yeah, right. So that can cause a high stress situation. Not having a process or procedure and something not knowing what to do. And we had a good conversation. It's going to come out on one of our podcasts. I wish I could come after this one. But yeah, it could be. So stay tuned. But we talked with our good friend Jonathan, who is an AI expert by all accounts. And he talked about

you know, training chat GPT who everybody listening to this most likely knows what that is at this point. But training chat GPT like feeding it all this information about your clinic, right? And letting it just on demand have an answer for you. Like what is our procedure for a frustrated patient? Boom, here's our procedure for that. Yeah. And so one of the this is how it is with any type of data. And that's one of the beauties of AI is

You can have all the data in the world. You can have all these procedures written down somewhere. But if they're not easily accessed or easily observed, you won't use them or you won't make a good decision because you don't have the data in front of you. So, and that's the thing too, you think about your clinic. Think about how you train your front desk. How often do you retrain? How often do you actually say, hey, let's take a situation and let's talk about it? Did you train them the first month?

And then they just went off to the races and said, bye. You know, like, I got this mentality. And then six, nine months later, we have a nice little pop-up of a high pressure situation. And the person forgot their training or just did not do what you hoped they would do. Right. Like, I used to work at a bank a long time ago. And so like we went through all the, what to do during a robbery. And it's very fascinating what you do. But at the end of the day, like,

The mindset was get the robber out of the bank. Don't lock him in there with you, right? So that's a high pressure situation. And the key is being calm. Like at the end of the day, being calm and falling back on what you know is supposed to work. Because when you, and this is what we all know, if you're able to make a decision about something without the stress of the situation upon you, it makes more sense. But when you're making a decision as a reaction to that stress, chances are it wasn't the best decision.

It was a decision, but not necessarily the best one. So I'm going to have a lot of pilot stories today. Oh, yeah. I'm going to prepare you right out of the gate. Because that's life and death. Yeah. Within like seconds. I'm going to prepare you right out of the gate that I'm going to have pilot stories today. And it's very relevant to stressful situations. Yeah. So we just put a new engine in the plane. And it's a unique engine type for our plane. And I'm up at 5,000 feet.

testing the engine for the first time, and we have an engine out failure. Yeah. And what the reason I bring that up is for what you just said. All of my training kicked in and I was calm. Now my passenger wasn't like my safety pilot. I was not the passenger. Like one of the co-owners of the plane was my passenger as a safety pilot. He wasn't near as calm as I was, but I was the pilot in command. Right. And.

I can't even really explain to you the level of stress that came along with that. Right. And I didn't even feel that stress until after all the event was over. But the point was, is all of my training kicked in. And I landed safely with no issues at all. It's one of my best landings. And then when you land, you go, okay, I got out of the plane. To be honest with you, like literally couldn't talk and then walked all the way down the taxiway by myself, just to like collect myself.

Okay, but none of that happened in the moment. No, all of my training kicked in for that. So anyway, having so PS in the back of your mind train consistently, I'm constantly training myself, right? Well, your clinic should be doing the same. Well, and you and the doctors, you guys have to have was it called the education continuing education, right? Always going on. Same thing with your staff, like you should re educate them on high pressure situations, how to handle them because they're open. The whole point of training is giving

the person the right tools and resources for when the moment comes not if but when it comes they do what they're supposed to do and it diffuses the situation very quickly because like nick if you were if you've been a pilot for like 20 years and but you never like refresh on your training you just kind of kept the license type of thing when that popped up some of your procedures have been gone because you didn't rework them in your mind a little bit right so no doubt

I mean, like I said, life and death with a plane, right? Because you're 30 to 60 seconds away from a really bad day if you didn't react to it properly. So again, more pilot, right? But I want you to think about, I immediately went to my ABC checklist, or my ABC mentality for an emergency landing. A, airspeed, B, best place to land, C, checklist, D, declare emergency, E, emergency land. I've already learned it. Yeah.

Right. And it was now time in a stressful situation to apply that. So again, I'm going to stop talking about that for just a second. Well, like the ABCs of high pressure for medical, right? Well, what are they? I don't know. That's what I'm saying. Like for your clinic, there should be a system in place. Like I can tell you, I'm not going to now, but I can tell you the four C's of account management at our, at our company. Right. So I can tell you what those are and our client success.

client success managers should know what they are so that they can communicate effectively to our clients, basically in any kind of situation. Yeah, right. So high pressure situations, obviously pandemic, or let's just talk about it seasonality, there are peak seasons, right? There are SOPs in your business that you need to know for situations of patients coming in, right? So SOPs, standard operating procedures, what are some other stressful situations, billing?

can be a stressful situation when you did it wrong and the client's pissed at you. Yeah, I mean, or just any type of, honestly, because when people are coming into an urgent care, any medical, there's usually something wrong. Like they have, they're sick or their child's sick or their spouse is sick or whatever, and so they're already kind of stressed. And then if you present something to them they were not expecting, be it a bill they weren't expecting because, or you ran their blue cross and it...

came back denied because it's old and they didn't renew it because that happens. You've got to be prepared for that. And here's the thing. If you try to match the energy of the person, you're going to lose every time. No doubt. You have to be the lead energy in terms of staying calm and complacent because the reality is, if you can't control the situation and you let the customer control the situation,

the customer's going to lose too, not win, but they will also lose, because that's going to end badly. And at the end of the day, it's going to hurt you, the person that's doing the job, it's going to hurt you, because now you're in a situation where you didn't do what you're supposed to, and you reacted. We've had clients like that with that, right? Like we've had previous employees that matched the energy of a client or went away on the high side, and we're like, hey, you need to chill out, go home. Come back next day.

And that's just real. Like that's a real thing. We're all dealing with life. I mean, right now, you know, inflation's a big deal, a lot of conversations around that. And so there's extra stress there. And so it's hard to stay calm with everyday life going on, but you have a job to do, and you have an opportunity to do what you're supposed to. So just remember that. Like that person up front is...

influencing what's happening. We're talking about how we know we talk about marketing all day. But like, if they screw up, it doesn't matter how good we are. That they've ruined that person's day. Well, and we also want, you know, you to be able to provide amazing patient experience. So understanding how you respond to stress is a key like for me, I shut down a little bit during stress. Or, you know, if I'm well trained, I'm dialed in. But if I'm not well trained, then I shut down, right? Some people get angry. Some people just

bury their head and get after it, right? Like, I'm just gonna go fix a problem. That's gonna deal with the stress. Some people get high blood pressure because of stress. Anyway, understanding how you react to stress. We're 12 minutes in and we haven't moved on to our next point. Sorry. We're gonna do that. All right, so the next thing that I wanna talk about is time management and efficiency. Okay, so this breaks down into prioritizing tasks, streamlining your workflows and leveraging technology that's available to you. This is especially important into a high pressure situation, right? So...

Imagine being a front desk person who's responsible for checking people in. Maybe they're responsible for taking all that information and inputting it into their system, making sure that everybody in the back, the nurses and everybody are notified that you're even here. Right. Making sure that all of their charts are pulled up and their files are pulled up if you're on paper. But having everything pulled up and making sure that it's ready for the doctor, you have all of these things going on. And it just immediately reminds me of task saturation. Yeah.

But okay, so I have a story. And this is just been, I'm very fascinated by this because we're in 2024. Why am I still doing paperwork? Why is it not being done on my phone or inside a portal? And this is where it gets better. So I had to go to a specialist three weeks ago, they said, Hey, we're gonna mail you your paperwork. Okay, that's weird. Never got it, by the way. And works out there floating around. Well, thankfully, it's all

blank, but never got the paperwork. So, but I got an email from their portal, said, hey, go ahead and do an e-check in to fill out all this stuff. I'm like, okay. So I filled it all out the night before my appointment, because my appointment was the first thing in the, like, eight o'clock next morning. I get to the place, obviously, I've learned this now. If you set 8 a.m. appointments, you get the real flavor of the office because you're the first one there and they're not ready for you.

And it is hilarious because every time I've done it now, they're always, ah, so-and-so's not here yet. I don't know how to do her job, but I'll try. Like literally, that's the conversation I've had a couple of times. Some of those are running late, they're dropping their kids off. Yeah, I don't know where they are, you know, that type of thing. Anyway, so I do the e-check-in, do all this stuff. I go to the doctor next day, and this is the situation. The check-in lady wasn't there yet, so the billing lady was there. She said, I don't do check-in, but I do billing. What's your name?

Okay, I

We'll get you in just a minute. That's how it should have gone. Because I give them my insurance. I give them everything. There's no reason for me to do this other than let me give you my driver's license to prove who I am. It's just amazing because she had no idea. She's like, I don't know where this stuff is. And she handed that clipboard like that's a standard thing for them. So I'm like, what's going on? So efficiency, because she was stressed, because that was not her job at that moment. And she was trying to answer a phone call, talk to me.

somebody had an actual billing question she was trying to adjust for that person, the other person that showed up, you had a little bit of pressure. I didn't really care, but I was just fascinated by it because like my part could have been very simple, but it became difficult. And then she accidentally hit print like three times. And so that printer was stacking with paper. It was about 60 pages in a print. I was like, what is this crap? So then that brings us to prioritizing tasks, right?

what is the priority in everything that you just said? In terms of like... I don't know, you just said a whole lot of stuff. What was the priority? Like if we're gonna take everything that you just said, what should they have prioritized as far as their task? So I think my opinion is the person standing in front of you. Okay, I agree. You're patient. The person in front of you. Next is the phone call. And now this is where you should probably have a system in place where it goes into a hold mode for you. Sure.

So you can pick it up and not just infinite ringing. Cause infinite ringing is just discouraging. Then it goes to after that, any paperwork that needs to be supplied. Cause what she could have said was, hang on, I'm gonna get your paperwork printed, I'll call you back up in just a minute. That could have been, but she didn't. I just stood there and she's just sitting there scrambling. And then I watched the printer fill with paper. I'm like, I hope that's not my paperwork. And she just took a handful.

stuck it on clipboard and gave to us like, well, I hope it's all the same. I hope it's not like a repeat of itself. And it wasn't I'll give her credit for that. But no, it was just unnecessary. Like, and the other person finally showed up until she disappeared. But the other person to do anything. Well, all back to everything that you just said is there, there was no priority to the task at hand. Like, I've got a patient here, I'm trying to answer a phone, I'm trying to enter in some kind of billing thing.

And they're trying to do it all at once and it just falls apart, especially when you're missing a person, right? Because there's no prioritization Streamlining the workflows. I know I'm gonna do everything I can to get my patient served first Then there should be time set aside to bill. Yeah, that's time set aside You can time block in an urgent care. You can time block in a clinic All right, and then making sure that you have some kind of system in place for those phone calls again That's a patient on the other end of that phone. That's gonna get a priority over a billing issue

I know you want to get paid. And if you prioritize this properly, all of that is going to get taken care of. Again, all back to marketing through your front desk by being organized and having everything in place. Very quick, I'm in my instrument rating, right? More airplane stories. One of the things that I was doing while flying the plane is my instructor was pushing me through task saturation. Oh yeah. To the point. What's your name? Yeah, to where he asks you your name. Like he's put so many tasks on you.

that when he says, okay, what's your name? And you look at him like, what? Right. You can't even say your own name. That's how many tasks they put you. And all I can imagine is a SpongeBob episode. We threw out his name. So that again, I failed that, but I learned something. Aviate, navigate, communicate, Aviate, navigate, communicate. There is a system in place for me to be able to manage my task saturation.

you have one at your clinic, I have to fly the plane first. Right? I need to make sure that I have all of my instruments in front of me and I have the plane under control. Once I have the plane under control, then I can start worrying about where I'm going. Right? Once I know where I'm going, then I can communicate to everybody who's trying to communicate to me through the microphones or people on the plane. I have an order of importance for my tasks. Aviate, navigate, communicate. Now, what is it for yours? Patient first. Mm-hmm.

right? I'm going to start with that, right? And so then I'll ask you the next question is billing the next thing you should be paying attention to I have no idea. So in my head, I just came up with patient communicate paperwork. There you go. So the PCP of prioritization for your front desk, I love it. Talk to your patient, communicate accordingly, then do the paperwork, communicate to your team, paperwork left and

Payport can mean a multitude of things. It could be data entry that the doctor needs. That could be coding for billing. That could be a number of different things. But the point I'm trying to say is like, from a marketing perspective, you got to put your patient first. That's what they're going to remember. Yeah, because at the end of the day, like, and we've said this before, a patient or like myself, we're way more chill if you communicate with us what's going on and we're not just sitting. Because like I showed up with that place at seven.

745 and door was open. So go in and I signed my little name, whatever and they call me up and what there's a whole mess. I didn't see the doctor until I got an eight o'clock point. Remember I didn't see the doctor till eight 40, 20 minutes of that was filling out paperwork and waiting. That you had already filled out. Yeah. And so then when I saw it like, cause I thought, oh, I'm.

Cause I shoot for the early mornings because you send the first one and I can get in and out pretty quick. That's what happened to me. I'm right. It was super fast, but um, I didn't leave until 10. Right. And the spent time with doctor 15 minutes. I mean he was great. Um, and, and it was, I learned a lot, but it was me at cooking. I'll spend like an hour cooking food and everybody will have devoured it in like eight minutes. Oh yeah.

That's so true. Like, and then my And then I'll spend just as much time cleaning up afterwards. Just don't do what my dad does. If I can eat it, if it takes me longer to cook it than eat it, I don't want it. I'm like, well, that's microwave only. You would have never survived in the 1800s or before. Well, let's go right back to that for just a minute, like prioritizing your task, streamlining your workflows. If you have processes in place for you to do that, hey,

And you like maybe you have an employee over here or a team member that you immediately hand their information over to, and they do that data entry so that you can focus on your patient. I know that's hard to do when it's just one of you, but it's very rare where I walk into any medical facility and there's not two people sitting there, you know, having a plan for that. And then you have all this technology in place, utilize it, put solve in place, where they can go in, put clockwise in place, where they can have their EMR or Athena, where they can go online and give you all that information before they ever walk through the door.

that's leveraging technology. Yes, follow up as well. Text messages, review requests, like leverage that a QR code at your front desk to ask for a review is so much easier than you having them pull out their phone. Oh, and we have some fancy we're gonna be bringing to the UCA for reviews to shameless plug. Yeah, we're for the UCA people out there come by our booth. Yeah, something very fancy that we've purchased. We didn't come up with it. But it will greatly increase your review.

opportunities. Right. Anyway, so that does remind me about the utilizing your systems because the weird part was when I got to the nurse practitioner to do like my intake inside the little doctor's room, she had questions about stuff from my previous visits for my primary care that I did not fill out. And then she said, well, what about this? This and this like, oh yeah, I don't know. So she had access to my stuff. I'm like, what am I doing here? What is happening right there? There was. And so to me, that's that classic two systems aren't talking. And sometimes it's two people not talking.

And one's doing an old way and another one doing a new way. I bet that happens a lot. Oh, I'm positive. All right, moving on to our next segment, we're going to talk about dealing with upset patient upset patients. Again, I know you're trying to make the connection to marketing right now. But how you handle negative situations, I've had negative situations that have been spun around and turned me into a great customer, long term. Okay. Honestly, we did that recently with a customer. Yeah, go for it. Tell the story.

So we had a, we have a customer right now. He just upgraded yesterday to lots of things, which was cool. Tell about Jared. Oh, okay. Cool. I don't know what you're talking about right now, but go for it. No. So we, I'm excited about this story. Tell me more. Who is this? Yeah. Who are we talking about? No, we have, we have a client, um, not medical by the way, but we had goofed up, uh, basically how a lead got into his system. Didn't catch it for like a couple of days or training on my part. Yeah. But I fixed it. It's all good. Uh, everything's good, but

It was negative, right? Like he lost potential money. He was a little upset with us. He was, we were still pretty new with him. We're like, not good. Uh, we worked some things out with them and then, um, yesterday he upgraded. He brought all his companies to us and we're doing everything we can with him. And he loves us. And so that could have been, you're fired to double my money with you. Yeah. Uh,

Thank you for sharing that story. I don't mind going to the details. We were doing lead generation and we forgot to connect it to a system so that he got notifications of these leads and 30 days went by of leads generated for him that he never communicated with and it is our fault. Right. The first thing I did is I owned it. I didn't make an excuse. I didn't blame it on the employee who actually had dropped the ball there.

again, due to poor training on my part, right? Again, I'm owning it, right? I let him know, hey, what do I need to do to make this right? And he told me, and I did it because it was within reason of something that I could do. Yeah, right. And then, now we've built that trust over, I don't know, three to six months now. Right, not even that long. Right. So building trust, showing our work, showing what we do, sending him a toy.

that you're right. And then Grace, I'll just say Grace had managed to be able to turn that round into like a raving fan. Oh, yeah, he loves working with us. We love working with him. He loves working with grace. Like, it's been a good thing. But that's the reality of it. Like they're offered. You can never look at bad situation as a negative situation. There's opportunities inside the situation. Either you learn from it, you gain from it, but you never just say, well, that was crap. And then you move on. Because if you don't learn from it,

And it may be a very, very tiny lesson, but every lesson adds up over time. Because if you look at where we were four years ago to today, a lot of lessons learned. And there are a lot of standards we have now in place. And I know that could be the same for your medical office. Because what you were doing the first month you were open versus the fifth year that you're open, it's a whole lot different. So let's talk about some situations that would make patients upset. I'll just come out with one. I know you can talk about billing in just a second,

I remember going to the emergency room one time and we were sitting there for a long, long time, right? And we kept seeing people come in and go straight back. Oh, that's the, that's the worst. Right? You see it. You're like, what the crap, man. I've been sitting here for like five hours. This is a restaurant with reservations. Exactly. And we can talk about that analogy as well. They took the time to make a reservation online. Save your spot online because you're using solve health or some technology, right? Okay. That's another story. Anyway, shameless plug there.

Point I'm trying to make though is like that front desk person took the time to come out me with my sick kid and Let me know they said hey, I know you see these people coming back I know you see that and I know it's frustrating those people are very sick and Need immediate attention and yours. I know it sucks, and I know you don't feel good And I know it hurts, but these people like it's life or death for them And it's just not the same level of urgency that we have there

And I know it's frustrating, but I wanted you to know that I'm acknowledging that you're seeing this. I'm acknowledging that it's happening. Just the fact that they came out and communicated with me eased the tension that I was feeling. Yeah. Right. And if we could sum up this episode, please communicate. Yeah. Period. Like just communicate. Give you another quick example. We were at a restaurant one time, totally different situation, but we were sitting there and we had ordered first and we're watching all the people around us get their food.

And finally, that's the word after about 45 minutes, the server came by embarrassed and said, I forgot to plug your order in. I forgot to plug your order in. He'll be comped it. He did. Yeah, he comped it. He apologized. He owned it. And we went from being frustrated to totally fine because they did right by us. I've had to happen a few times where you watch the food go by and then you're like, it's been 30 minutes since I ordered.

And then they had the oh crap moment on their face. And then you have a free dinner, which I don't mind, right? I don't mind paying for a free, getting a free dinner because I sat for 30 extra minutes. But the worst would be, I'll get you ordered in right now, and you still get a bill. Yeah, yeah. Not coming back after that. No effort to make it right. So let's take it to a clinic. They didn't hit your insurance like they were supposed to. Oh gosh. Or they- So deal with that for a second.

They didn't hit your interest like it was supposed to, or they completely coded it wrong, or they ignored your secondary, where they made it feel like it was your fault. Yeah, oh yeah, and this is so, because the reality, like I've been learning, because like we have secondary here, and that kind of throws people off sometimes. Oh, you have more interest? Like yeah. And I don't, like I had one experience where like they just completely ignored it, or just put in a bunch of random numbers.

And so I call them and say, no, it's supposed to be this. Oh, OK. So then it waits another three months to process whatever. But no, at the end of the day, there's so many things that are happening from an information standpoint. It's so easy to make a mistake. And you need to communicate and just own it. If you just own it half the time, just say, we kind of screwed up, but we fixed it for you. I've had more positive experiences after owning my mistakes. Again.

I know we're going a little long, but I'll give another story. Uh, I was driving with my family too fast. I got pulled over. I got pulled over. This was some holiday. We were at the river, right? I was in an unfamiliar area. I was on a straight highway that should not have been March 30 miles an hour. It should have been March 55 miles an hour, which is how fast I was going. It's a four lane freaking highway. That's where I am right now near my house. It's four lane and it's 35 and a cop sits there.

I'm like, this is stupid, it's four lane. Anyway, I'm gonna get off of that for a second. I'm gonna get off, feels like a trap, but whatever. It's a triumph. Anyway, there's not a car in sight. I get pulled over and I knew I was speeding. I knew it. And the cop pulled me over and he goes, do you know how fast you're going? I was like, I know exactly how fast I was going. I was going 55 in a 30. I totally botched it, I'm sorry. And then to make matters even worse, I had forgotten.

that I wasn't in my car, I was in my dad's, so I didn't have my insurance with me. Even better. Yeah, and so anyway, to make a short story long, too late, right, is.

You know, I owned it. I didn't make excuses. I didn't get mad at the officer. I just said, this is my fault. Just let me know what you need from me. It's my mistake. He goes, you know what? It's a holiday weekend. Uh, thank you for not making a scene about this. Please slow down. Y'all have a good time. By the way, let your dad drive since he has his license and his insurance with him. We switched seats and the officer let us go. And

All of that from just now, I'm not going to say it's going to work every single time. It has a great, no shot. If I said, what is your problem? I wasn't speaking. What do you mean? 69. Show me your radar. Show me your radar. That's a quick one. I get so many tech talks of these motorcycle people arguing with cops and like you screwed up. You just, you know that you're just, you're just cutting the video to make the cop look bad. So anyway, all that to just say like I, I own the problem. And because I own the problem,

If I know it's my fault, I'm not saying I own every problem, especially if it's not yours. I don't think the customer's always right. I don't believe that, I don't subscribe to it. All right, but when it is my fault, I own it. All right, let's keep going. Let's wrap up. Best practices for high pressure situations. I thought you said Bass Pro Shop. I did, I said Bass Pro Shop. Best practices for high pressure situations. Two of them, man. One, tell lots of stories. I've done that today. Too many, right? Tell stories. Talk about that patient that came in and that you messed up.

And that like you messed up even the situation. This is why y'all this is why we got a one star review. Right? I mean, this patient came in, they were clearly pissed off about what we did. We didn't own it. We didn't do it right. From now on, we're going to fix that. Yeah, I mean, it goes back to like, they're not wrong.

like you build the wrong insurance. That's your fault. Not theirs. Dr. A you were a butthole that day. You need to learn. We don't have a Dr. A with us. I don't know. Dr. A, Dr. B, Dr. X. But no, like, I mean, because that's something that we've talked about. I wish there was extensive training on bedside manners for doctors because there are some doctors, they are wonderful what they do.

But they're a cringe to talk to. And we even had that with Courtney. And when she had something going on, the anesthesiologist was, anesthesiologist was so not bedside mentor friendly, like you could see him physically get frustrated with Courtney's question. And then he just left. Like we, we said this and just walks away. And then a new one showed up.

And they was up, I'm gonna get billed for him anyway, because he's walking in a stupid room. That's funny. And so, that's how it goes. It's just amazing. It's like, doctors are your people, you have stress, I get it. We're people too, you're patients. And at the end of the day, if you didn't have any patients, you wouldn't have practice. So be nice to your patients. When we look at all the negative reviews, it's like there's three options. Really terrible front desk person, really terrible doctor, or

the communication was just way off or slash the diagnosis was not what they wanted. Or sometimes it was just a really terrible patient. And let's add that in there too. We know that some people just suck. They're looking to sue you. They're looking for drugs. You know, cause I know like we get that. Cause I was reading some of the negative reviews on one of our clients and it was straight up like, okay, no, that, that patient was a drug addict and they were looking for something. You weren't going to give it to him cause you recognize that and you got them out quick.

And so like they're going to put out bad reviews. And if you're ever curious, like you want to question, if you question yourself, we're like, I think we did everything right. Here's a little quick tip. Go to that review, click on that profile, and you can see all the other reviews they give. And there are some people that are just out there to terrorize people. So just, if you get a really nasty review, you're like, there's no way that was us. And you go check their stuff, you say, oh, they just hate everybody. And so sometimes you need to train that way too.

where you say, hey, I saw this come up, but I recognize it. Because that's the other thing, because the last thing you don't want to do is if you become an owner that automatically blames your team for everything and doesn't look at the whole situation. Because there are times here, like we screwed up as a team. There are other times. The customer really screwed up, and there's no way we're going to fix that for them. So that just, and we have to always recognize that there's a bigger picture. There's not just one side. You've got to look at both sides. Well, guys, just to recap.

It's been a heck of an episode. We've gone a little long, but I think it was worth it, right? So understand, identify what those high pressure situations are in your clinic, okay? Figure out your time management and your efficiency. Put in those acronyms that we talked about, right? So ABCDs of urgent care. Patient, communicate, and paperwork. Patient first, communicate next, paperwork last, okay?

I love that. And you know what, if you have your own right into us and let us know what they are, and we'll talk about it, it's PCP, which people can like primary care physician or patient communicate paperwork. There you go. All that. So time management, dealing with the upset patients, right? Have a plan for that. And you have a plan by telling lots of stories of here's what we've done in the past. Here's where we've messed up. Here's where we've done it, right? And then have training and preparedness. Make sure that your team has a plan in place that they can fall back on.

make sure that training is in place that they can fall back on so that when the pressure is high and the stakes are high and the frustrations are high, the training kicks right in and you don't even have to make a decision. It's already made for you. Cool. Take us out, Michael. All right guys. Thank you all again for listening to this. This is part two of three, right? Yeah. So we'll have one, we'll have a final episode related to this pastor series I call, related to the front desk. We're excited to have for it. And also coming up, we'll be at the UCA.

in April 2024. And Vegas, if you're part of the UCA, come visit us love to talk to you. We'll be having some giveaways and stuff like that. So it's coming up in about a month or so. So excited for that coming. And then if you got any questions, hello at pati please send us your high pressure situations that you resolved or you didn't know how to love to bring those to the podcast and kind of showcase like this is what people are up to. So we'll catch you guys on the next one. Have a great week. See you next week.