Airing Those Grievances
The late Jerry Stiller invited everyone to air their grievances on this day, using a symbolic pole in lieu of a Christmas tree. “You gather your family around, and you tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year,” Stiller’s Frank Costanza said in the classic Seinfeld. In my home, that’s really more of a Thanksgiving tradition, although sometimes the grievances come in the afternoon after school when I forget to pick up Sophie or when I’m cooking dinner and despite all the effort, “it tastes a little bit like garbage dad.” My wife, God love her, has a lot of grievances – like when I accidentally weed whacked all the lazy Susans before they bloomed or that time I ran over the kid’s tricycle, on Christmas morning. “You’ve done a lot of dumb things Bry, but this takes the prize,” she said, with that look only a wife can give, the one that says, “I love you, but are you serious?”
As normal as grievances are in my home, they are becoming more popular in healthcare. Physician office complaints are highest in our poll of 712 healthcare stakeholders – up 320% this year alone - while hospitals had a 230% increase, home care agencies up 175% and health insurance plans a 150% jump, although insurers have led the ranking 5 of 7 years. Three complaints dominated the grievance line - a lack of follow up after appointments or ability to talk to a doctor or PA about treatment and lifestyle decisions, like whether to change or taper medications due to a change in symptoms or whether the 70 year old woman with heart disease and osteoporosis can eat a specific kind of yogurt, (2) a lack of staffing when people need it and (3) confusing bills for hundreds or thousands of dollars.
The type of complaints run the gamut though, like one person complained to a home care agency that “my nurses aides keep leaving their smelly hazelnut coffee at the house.” It takes a special person to be in charge of handling grievances. In fact many hospitals say they have had to hire more staff to manage the volume in recent years. Being the chief of complaints is not much different than being a mom if you ask me. “I get all the crying and all the crisis,” my wife will say, but she seems to mostly manage to redirect.
As we approach the new year, there’s no doubt a lot in healthcare that needs to improve, but perhaps more healthcare providers and payers should just hire moms to manage complaints and if not that, maybe take a cue from Frank Costanza and set up an aluminum pole in your waiting area, allow patients to air their grievances out in the open and then, after one patient wrestles the ER doctor or the chief of surgery in a final feat of strength, all problems will be solved. From all of us here, have a safe and healthy holiday, Merry Christmas and of course happy Festivus for the rest of us.