4 ways to defuse an angry patient and protect your staff

A patient 40 minutes into a wait erupts at the front desk. The receptionist absorbing it had nothing to do with the delay. Anger in a medical practice rarely lands on the physician. It lands on staff, and it costs a disrupted schedule, a rattled reception area and one more push toward burnout.

On this week’s Five Minute Practice Fix, Neil Baum, MD, breaks down four flashpoints, the front desk confrontation, the medication refill standoff and the billing dispute among them, and how to defuse each. His take: patients need clarity, kindness and a path to resolution. Staff need to know the practice has their back.

Welcome to Five Minute Practice Fix, featuring instructional videos by physician and business of medicine expert Neil Baum, M.D. These videos are 5 to 10 minutes long and will provide practical ideas and suggestions that have been tested in his practice or used by other physicians, significantly improving the efficiency and productivity of their medical practices.

About Neil Baum, M.D.

Baum is a professor of clinical urology at Tulane Medical School in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the author of Marketing Your Clinical Practice: Ethically, Effectively, Economically, which is in its fourth edition, has sold over 175,000 copies and has been translated into Spanish. He has also written The Complete Business Guide to a Successful Medical Practice, which was published in 2015. He also authored What’s Going on Down There?, which has served as a guide for women’s health. He has written 10 books on practice management and the business of medicine.

Baum was the columnist for American Medical News for more than 25 years. He wrote the popular column “The Bottom Line” for Urology Times for more than 20 years. He has authored or coauthored over 250 articles in peer-reviewed medical publications on various urologic topics, as well as articles on practice management.

He has also authored The Business Basics of Building and Managing a Healthcare Practice (Springer 2019), which emphasizes the importance of being involved in the business of a medical practice.