Your Other Front Door: What Happens Before the Patient Ever Walks In?

The patient experience may begin long before someone enters your building.

Leslie Edmondson | Founder & Principal Consultant

In a recent LMR Insight, I encouraged healthcare leaders to do something simple: come in the front door.

Walk through the parking lot. Look at the signage. Enter where patients enter. Sit where they sit. Listen to what they hear. Look at the front desk through their eyes.

But there's another front door healthcare organizations need to evaluate. And increasingly, it may be the first one patients encounter.

Your virtual front door.

Before a patient ever walks into your practice, they may search for you online, visit your website, read reviews, check whether you accept their insurance, look for an appointment, call your office, navigate your telephone system or complete an online registration process.

Every one of those interactions communicates something about your organization.

How easy are you making it for someone to become—and remain—your patient?

Start With a Simple Exercise: Call Yourself

Years ago, I took Dale Carnegie training, and one lesson I remember was remarkably simple: call yourself.

Call your own office and listen to what everyone else hears.

That idea has stayed with me throughout my career because we become accustomed to experiencing our organizations from the inside.

We know which extension to dial. We know whom to ask for. We know when the office closes for lunch. We know that pressing "2" doesn't really get you where you need to go, so we press "0." Our patients don't know any of that.

So, every once in a while, become the caller. Don't use your office telephone. Use your cell phone—or even better, call from a number the staff won't immediately recognize—and experience the process exactly as a patient would.

What happens? How many times does the telephone ring? How are you greeted? If there's a recorded message, how long is it? Is the recording clear, warm and professional? Are the office hours accurate? Are the menu options easy to understand? Does the message still mention a provider, location or service that has changed? How long are you on hold? What do you hear while you're waiting?

And here's one I always pay attention to: how many times are you told, "Your call is very important to us," while you're still waiting for someone to answer it?

Could I actually accomplish what I called to do?

Healthcare organizations often measure call volume. We should also pay attention to call experience.

Sometimes the easiest way to discover what's happening isn't to run another report.
It's to pick up the phone and call yourself.

Your Front Desk May Be Doing Too Much

Now consider the person answering that telephone. Front-desk employees may simultaneously be:

Greeting arriving patients

Checking patients in

Verifying information

Collecting payments

Answering telephones

Scheduling appointments

Responding to questions

Placing callers on hold

Communicating with clinical staff

Managing paperwork or electronic registration

Protecting patient privacy

Trying to remain pleasant through all of it

That's a lot to ask of one person.

When telephone service isn't where leadership wants it to be, the first question shouldn't always be, "What's wrong with the employee?" Sometimes the better question is, "What's wrong with the process we've asked the employee to manage?"

Look at call volumes, peak times, hold times and abandoned calls if your telephone system provides those analytics. And look at why people are calling. Patterns can tell you where the organization needs to improve.

Does Every Call Need to Go to the Front Desk?

If a large percentage of incoming calls are related to a few recurring issues, your telephone system may be able to help.

Perhaps patients need clearly defined options for appointments, billing, medical records or another high-volume need.

That doesn't mean creating a telephone tree with 14 options. We've all experienced those.

The objective isn't to make the telephone system more complicated. It's to make the patient's path shorter.

If a caller has a billing question, can the system connect them with someone who can actually answer it? If a patient needs to schedule an appointment, can they reach scheduling? If the practice offers online scheduling, is there an appropriate opportunity to tell callers about it?

Technology should eliminate unnecessary steps—not create additional ones.

Give Employees Communication Standards

Technology can't replace human interaction. When patients do reach someone, what do they hear?

Organizations can help employees by developing simple communication standards for common interactions.

"Thank you for calling [Practice Name]. This is [Name]. How may I help you?"

"May I place you on a brief hold while I find that information for you?"

"I apologize for the delay. Dr. Smith is running approximately 20 minutes behind. We appreciate your patience."

"Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

"Thank you for choosing us. We appreciate the opportunity to care for you."

These don't need to become rigid scripts delivered word-for-word. The goal is to give employees conversation guides and expectations that create consistency while still allowing people to sound like people.

Warmth shouldn't sound scripted.

If You Send Patients to Your Website, Go There Yourself

Listen to your telephone greeting again. Does it say something like, "For more information or to schedule an appointment, please visit our website"?

Great. Now hang up. And go to the website.

Can you actually do what the telephone message just told you to do?

Try to accomplish the most common things patients need from your website—from your phone.

Find the correct telephone number

Find office hours

Locate the practice

Determine whether an insurance plan is accepted, when appropriate

Find a provider

Request or schedule an appointment

Locate billing information

Find patient forms

Access the patient portal

Ask a general question

Provide feedback

If your telephone system sends patients to the website, but the website sends them right back to the telephone, you haven't created convenience. You've created a loop.

Your Website Should Direct Traffic, Not Just Describe Your Organization

Healthcare websites frequently contain excellent information about physicians, services and locations. But does the website help patients get where they need to go?

A useful website shouldn't simply tell patients who you are. It should help them take the next step.

One relatively simple opportunity is a thoughtfully designed Contact Us function. Instead of offering only a blank message box, consider allowing patients to identify the reason they're contacting you through categories appropriate for your organization:

Appointment or Scheduling Question

Billing Question

Medical Records

Website or Patient Portal Assistance

General Question

Feedback About My Experience

Compliment or Employee Recognition

Other

Privacy and security matter. General web forms should not invite patients to submit sensitive clinical information when an appropriate secure communication method is required.

For suitable nonclinical inquiries, categorizing messages can help get them to the right person faster. And it creates something else that's extremely valuable:

A trail.

Follow the Trail

A patient submits feedback about an experience. What happens next? Who receives it? Who owns the response? How quickly is the patient contacted? Was the concern resolved? Was there a process problem? Did anyone close the loop with the patient?

Without a defined process, organizations can collect feedback without actually doing anything meaningful with it. That's a missed opportunity.

A structured feedback pathway can support service recovery.

Sometimes a patient doesn't expect perfection. They expect someone to care when something goes wrong.

Listen. Acknowledge. Investigate. Respond. Resolve what can be resolved. And close the loop.

Don't Build a System That Only Captures What's Wrong

There's another side to the feedback process that healthcare organizations sometimes overlook: compliments.

Imagine receiving a message that says, "The woman who checked me in this morning was wonderful. I was nervous about my appointment, and she was so kind to me."

What happens to that message? Does it disappear into an inbox? Or does someone identify the employee, share the compliment, notify her manager and recognize the behavior you want repeated throughout the organization?

Patient feedback isn't useful only when something goes wrong. It can help organizations identify employees who are quietly creating exceptional experiences every day.

Track the good, too.

Recognizing those moments reinforces the culture you're building.

Search Yourself

There's one more doorway to consider. Before calling you, many patients may search for you.

Search for your organization the way a prospective patient might. Search the practice name. Search the physician's name. Search the service. Search from a mobile device.

What appears? Is your address correct? Are your hours accurate? Is the telephone number correct? Do the links work? Are provider profiles current? What do your reviews say? Are patients repeatedly mentioning the same frustration? Are they repeatedly praising the same employee, physician or part of the experience?

Your digital presence is talking about your organization
whether you're participating in the conversation or not. Listen to it.

Take the Virtual Front-Door Test

SEARCH → CALL → CLICK → SCHEDULE → SUBMIT

Every so often, experience your organization as someone who doesn't know how it works. Then ask:

How easy was it to find us?

Was our information accurate?

Could I accomplish what I needed from a mobile device?

How long did I wait on the telephone?

Was the phone menu simple?

Was the greeting warm and professional?

Did I reach someone who could actually help me?

If I was directed to the website, could I complete the task there?

Could I easily provide feedback?

Who receives that feedback?

Is there a defined service-recovery process?

Do we capture compliments as well as complaints?

Do we recognize employees when patients tell us they're doing something right?

Where did I encounter unnecessary friction?

Are we making it easier—or harder—for patients to do business with us?

Sometimes You Need Someone Who Doesn't Know the Shortcut

Employees know the shortcuts. They know which extension to dial. They know where the form is hidden on the website. They know which menu option to choose. They know whom to email when something doesn't work. Patients don't.

That's why an outside perspective can reveal friction that has become almost invisible internally.

LMR Healthcare Mystery Shopping & Patient Journey Assessment

LMR Healthcare Advisors can evaluate both the physical and virtual patient journey through healthcare-focused mystery shopping and experience assessments.

Depending on an organization's needs, an assessment may include the digital search experience, online presence, website navigation, telephone experience, scheduling process, call routing, communication standards, arrival and check-in, waiting-room environment, staff interactions, feedback pathways, service recovery and follow-up.

The purpose isn't to catch employees making mistakes. It's to experience the organization as a patient experiences it.

LMR can then provide leadership with observations, strengths, potential gaps and practical recommendations for improving the patient journey.

Sometimes organizations don't need another dashboard telling them what happened.
They need someone to help them understand why the experience happened the way it did.

LMR Insight

Healthcare growth is built on relationships. And increasingly, those relationships begin before anyone walks through your front door.

They begin with a Google search. A telephone call. A website visit. An appointment request. A question. A review. A seemingly small interaction with someone at the front desk.

Every touchpoint is an opportunity to make healthcare easier to navigate and to demonstrate: we're glad you chose us.

So call yourself. Search yourself. Visit your website. Try to make an appointment. Send yourself a question. And experience your organization through the eyes of someone who doesn't already know how everything works.

You may discover that your most important front door isn't a door at all.

Further Reading & Resources

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) — CAHPS
AHRQ's program for understanding patients' experiences with healthcare, including access, communication, customer service and care coordination.
View resource

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality — Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit
Practical guidance for making healthcare information easier for patients to understand, navigate and act upon.
View resource

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — Person and Family Engagement
CMS resources addressing patient and family engagement in healthcare quality improvement.
View resource

HHS Office for Civil Rights — HIPAA and Online Tracking Technologies
Guidance relevant to healthcare organizations evaluating digital tools, websites, and protected health information.
View resource