How to lose friends and win enemies

And here we have a couple of nice neat bullet-shaped packages given out by a self anointed nerd antisocial MD PhD who has developed drscore.com, a website where doctors are scored and rated by patients and/or peers.  These are tips to APPEAR more empathic. Not to actually become empathic, heaven forbid. You just have to look like it...sick sad world...

• If there’s no parking for the patient when they arrive for their appointment, they think you don’t care about them. So you’ve got to have a good parking situation.
• If the staff is rude when the patient calls to make an appointment, they think you don’t care about them.

Other ways of interacting with patients that convey empathy:

• I schedule a lot of patients per unit time so I run to the door of the room and when I get there, I stop. I open the door really slowly so patients will think, “Oh, he’s in no hurry,” which is part of being perceived as caring.
• I make a big deal of using the alcohol on the wall to cleanse my hands, because when they get in the car and drive home and they’re listening to a spot on National Public Radio talking about doctors who don’t wash their hands, I want them to remember that, “Dr. Feldman used that alcohol and protected me because he’s a caring doctor.”
• I try to sit down, look patients in the eye, shake hands and introduce myself to everybody in the room.
• I try to connect with patients and establish rapport

- See more at: http://dermatologytimes.modernmedicine.com/dermatology-times/news/takeaway-how-positively-influence-patient-adherence#comment-5544

Does this guy think everybody is a 5 year old with such superficial (and creepy) observations such as "the doctor cares about me because I used the hand sanitizer". Most people are too sick, tired, dazed to notice. Also, hand sanitizer tends to be 99% alcohol and is highly flammable, thus not recommended if you're goig to use heat generating devices on a patient. Old fashioned soap and water first and ALWAYS you knob!!!!

Data mining is nothing new. It's become a forced issue in medicine because data is seen as the gateway to everything--patient volumes, scheduling, payments, procedures, the daily flow of work.
Doctors have time-limited board certifications. In essence this is a good thing, to ensure that physicians maintain high standards and excellence in their fields by continually self-education and training, because medicine is an ever changing and advancing beast that requires life long study. I became board certified in 1998 and then I re-certified with additional at-home independent study and testing--which was quite lengthy--in 2008. However, in the past 5 years or so, Maintenance of Certification, or MOC, has become linked with endless self assessments on patient safety, patient communication, peer review, and patient/customer surveys which must be filled out and then analyzed by a third party in order for the physician to maintain board certification.
Sort of how you get online surveys from hotels or stores after you purchase something? The same thing is happening in medicine. How happy or glowing would a survey be from a patient who had to go on water only for 48hrs due to pancreatitis? Or a patient with cognitive dysfunction post-stroke? Silly rabbit, tricks are for kids. It doesn't matter. Give the patient a lollipop or a small token of gratitude and they'll be happy to fill out a survey.
The patient, or the peer/colleague filling out surveys, isn't asked about the correct diagnosis or treatment. The surveys' content hinges around the customer service experience-- the "pleasingness" of office decor, the friendliness and responsiveness of staff, the accessibility of parking, the phone call to the office to make the initial appointment, and even whether the electronic health record meshes well with the colleague's electronic health record, or inter-operability of electronic technology.
I recently filled out a survey for a colleague wishing to maintain board certification. I kept a copy for my records. The survey asked me to rate the friendliness of the office staff, how well was I able to get referrals from the doctors, the overall ease and convenience for patients to see that doctor--i.e. location, parking, payment policies (!). How the fudge is this relevant to the medical service provided? What about doctors in downtown New York or Miami, where there is zero parking? How about doctors that don't participate in any 3rd party payors, are they to be penalized for going cash only? BY THE AMERICAN BOARDS OF SPECIALTIES???
Silly rabbit, we have fallen down the hole.