title: Managing your practice's first impression: the process of front-desk reengineering.
abstract: Patients must be regarded as consumers. As such, they are increasingly informed, questioning, cost-conscious, technologically savvy, and demanding. Just as health plans have developed defined contribution products that offer consumers more control over how and where their health-care dollars are spent, practice success is linked to reengineering office operations to offer consumers and patients greater choice, control, autonomy, and service. Patients and consumers want practices that deliver clinical and business services that meet the criteria of reliability, effciency, service offerings, patient focus, enthusiasm, customization, and trust. Physician practices must also take care to avoid destructive and disruptive behaviors and conditions such as noise, interference, excessive repetition, long waits, appointment delays, and staff rudeness. A successful patient-focused practice emerges when physicians and office staff begin to look at the clinical and service experience through the patient's eyes.
authors.affiliation: Rush University Medical Center, Department of Cardiovascular-Thoracic Surgery, 1725 West Harrison Street, Suite 1156, Chicago, IL 60612, USA. alison_walsh@rush.edu
authors.forename: Alison L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Walsh
mesh_terms: D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D005610:Freedom; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D009819:Office Visits; D009936:Organizational Innovation; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011216:Practice Management, Medical / Q000458:organization & administration*; D013689:Telephone; D013997:Time Factors; D014481:United States