Earlier this month I wrote a post titled Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Healthcare – Patient Relationship Management. I think it’s worth exploring a more personal look into the patient part of Patient Relationship Management.

We’ve all had bad experiences dealing with companies. I’m a little more sensitive about bad service because my job is to fix it. This afternoon my family and I had an experience with a healthcare organization that should help to drive home the point I try to get through to every company I talk to who wants to deploy CRM software. CRM is software and a business strategy. I see way too many companies talking software, software, software, and not saying a word about improvements they want with their business or customers. 

Wait a minute. It’s Customer Relationship Management, right? It’s about managing customers. To be more direct, it’s about optimizing your CRM implementation to improve your customer’s experience that they have doing business with your company. If those customers have too many bad experiences they will take their business elsewhere. What happens when too many people make the decision not to do business with you anymore?

A couple years ago I had a series of frustrating experiences with a bank that their Customer Relationship Management strategy and software should have prevented.  Isn’t it frustrating? How about when you have to deal with customer service for your cellphone? Or cable/satellite TV? Or car?

Getting poor service with an inanimate object is bad enough. But what about when it’s your health? Or how about your wife or children’s health? I don’t know about you but there is nothing more important than my family. Dealing with bad cellphone customer service is one thing. Bad service dealing with my family’s health is a whole different ballgame.

So here’s what happened. A couple of weeks ago my wife went into a local healthcare center for a test at the request of her doctor. The results came back indicating something wasn’t right which meant a more specific test needed to be done. It may or may not have been serious but as any good doctor would do they immediately scheduled the second test.

Fast forward to today. Test day. My wife was pretty nervous. Who wouldn’t be when for the past couple of weeks you’ve been wondering if there’s something wrong. So I took some time off work to go with her for support. My wife’s mother took a day off from her business and drove from Indiana (we live in Illinois) to watch our daughter. We were just about to leave home to go for the test when the healthcare place called saying there was a scheduling mix-up. They couldn’t do the test. More specifically, they don’t do that type of test at that location. My wife then told me this isn’t the first time this has happened with them. A few months ago she was scheduled for something else and they scheduled it at one location but told her a different location.

What? Scheduling mix-up? It’s a pretty common test. How the heck did the scheduling person schedule a common test at a location that doesn’t do that test?  Why didn’t they know this when it was being scheduled a couple of weeks ago? But should the scheduling person be expected to know everything that is or isn’t done at every location? Given it’s a large organization with dozens of locations I don’t think that’s realistic.

Every healthcare organization that has patients has (or is supposed to have) a patient scheduling system or Patient Relationship Management system. So the better question is, how the heck did the patient scheduling system allow the scheduling person to schedule the test in the first place? Probably because it wasn’t designed or implemented properly. The system probably never got configured to recognize which locations perform what tests. Or maybe it never got configured to prevent someone from making that scheduling mistake or at least flash a warning message about that test not being available at that facility.

But hold on. Let’s not forgot about the customer here. Me! I just wasted vacation time. My wife’s mother just wasted her time and money. And even worse, now it’s probably going to take another couple of weeks to schedule the test so my wife now is even more concerned.

Are we rescheduling the test with that healthcare company? No way. If they can’t even schedule a test right am I supposed to have any confidence they can do more complicated things right like properly diagnose and treat a health issue?     

Fairly soon I’m going to do a post about CRM installation versus implementation. There’s a big difference and this is a perfect example of why just installing CRM software and then telling your employees to use it is not the best approach. Is the CRM software supposed to magically know about the test/facility availability? No. A CRM business strategy and implementation methodology is what bridges the gap between CRM software and your unique business.

What do your customers think about doing business with your company?

Microsoft recently released a CRM demo or healthcare titled Patient Relationship Management. It’s a nice short five minute online demo that walks through a Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation that has been tailored for healthcare organizations.

• Demo: Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Patient Relationship Management (Requires Microsoft Silverlight)
• Information: Healthcare CRM Whitepapers and Datasheets

 Patient Relationship Management, or PRM, is a nice approach. CRM has been somewhat pigeonholed because of the CRM acronym’s “Customer” emphasis. Microsoft is now positioning “xRM” where the “x” is a variable that could represent just about any type of relationship such as patients, physicians, suppliers, vendors, etc. As CRM is being utilized increasingly as an end-to-end business productivity platform and not just a sales force database, companies employing the xRM concept will realize greater value from their investments.