La Pine: Your Next Practitioner Application Could Be a FAKE!

We’ve heard about the “secret shoppers” who go into retail stores to evaluate customer service. We even know about the “food critics” who eat out then write reports on their dinning experiences. I must admit to being a little surprised by the latest “mystery patient” methodology. 

It was announced in an article by Dave Gershman published in the Ann Arbor News, Sunday, July 6, 2008 that an outside firm was hired to test patient satisfaction at Saint Joseph Mercy Health System. Although this approach is frequently used by the retail industry to rate customer services, does this really work in a health care setting? One of the down sides of this practice is the additional strain it puts on an already busy office, clinic, and/or practitioner. Dr. Ronald White, President of New Jersey Physicians stated it is “a horrendously bad idea” employing marketing techniques that do not evaluate medical care. Recently the American Medical Association discussed this topic and now is having this type of practice evaluated by its Ethics Committee. 

From the MSP standpoint, testing our procedures with fake applications would significantly impact already limited resources. Before considering such a practice, it is critical to know exactly what goal the exercise would accomplish and then look for other methods to obtain the same information. We know how much time we spend with each application, sometimes looking for what is NOT there, in order to ensure the public that they will get safe care from our practitioners. 

We need to ask: Is the “undercover” approach similar to the practice of pulling a fire alarm to test the response time of the fire department?  

Seems we surely could come up with a more acceptable practice.