Hateful patients
This is a question primarily for my non-private practice homies. Much respect for you private practice guys and hopefully one day I will be there, but this is mostly aimed to my big hospital system brothers and sisters in arms who are stuck listening to admin and policies.
How do you deal with patients that suck? I’m not talking about the ones that are verbally abusive to staff and scream at visits, that’s an easy solution with patient dismissal. I’m taking about the ones that know how to walk the line without overstepping it. They’re dismissive and rude but never truly disrespectful. The ones you see on your schedule and question why the heck you decided to work with human beings. I’ve had two or three that are truly just awful people that make everyone around them miserable, but they aren’t outright disrespectful enough to be fired based off of our clinic policy. Had one recently that is normally a 40 minute only patient who BEGGED to be seen in a 20 minute slot, so against my better judgement I allowed it. I addressed 7 different problems, three of which were new, and answered a freaking slew of dieting questions. We went way over time addressing everything, because of course we did, and she still filed a complaint with our office manager, because of course she did, because we didn’t discuss whether or not she’s due for her mammo. Her annual is scheduled next month…
I could care less about the complaint and my office manager likely told her to kick rocks, but my question is, does anyone have experience efficiently getting these types of patients off your panel? She’s always been condescending and rude but never blatantly disrespectful enough to formally terminate. I want to be careful to make sure my CYA protocol is fully intact but also don’t want ti hate my life every time I see one of these patients on my schedule. Currently planning to just tell her at her next appt that I don’t think the physician patient relationship is a good fit, give her a list of other providers, and cover her meds until she gets reestablished. No formal termination but basically showing her the door. Anyone done this? I know there’s no such thing as a perfect panel and sometimes you just suck it up and deal with annoying patients, but this is for those rare few that really go out of their way to make a visit miserable. Would really appreciate any shared experiences and/or advice.
Thanks in advance amigos!