Assignment 7A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

The break down in communication between patients and medical provider

·         Opportunity: Many Americans miss important calls from their health care providers about important medical information.

o   The Who: Americans that actively use their health care

o   The What: not being able to properly speak to their doctors

o   The Why: because of the way that calling a medical office is falling apart

·         Testing the who: The bulk of the people who experince this problem are senior citizens because they are the ones who must use hospitals and doctor offices more often, but everyone at least once a year is going to see a doctor and receive calls about lab results or follows up. The family members of these people also suffer as they are trying to help.

·         Testing the what: The answering machines in a medical clinic is sometimes the same that you hear when you are calling tech support and takes out a lot of the patient comfort from trying to speak to a doctor about a serious issue. Missing a call is so frustrating and causes more confusion.

·         Testing the why: the idea behind the answering machine in a medical office is meant to make thing go quicker and more efficiently so that patents can get care quicker, but the system has become outdated when there are new ways that especially the younger generation communicate.

·             Interview #1:

o   This interview was with a man that is over 65, he has had a persistent cough and cold. He has been in and out of urgent care centers to make sure that it wasn’t getting worse. He has been waiting on calls that would tell him more of what is going on and it got so bad from his perception that he just drove and didn’t leave until someone was able to talk to him. It shows how sad it is that someone who in the time when they need their doctors to be as transparent as possible are getting lost in the list of other patients. It should not come to having to drive to the office and cause scene.

·         Interview #2:

o   This interview had much of the same tone because it was with a single mother with a young child, young kids are always in and out of the pediatrician office because they are in day cares or schools where they get sick every other week. The mom has so much to deal with already with her own job, school, and trying to get the child to feel better. She is over waiting so long in the doctor’s office and wasting time on the phone with them, where she has gotten so mad that it makes her want to cry or scream because they act like they don’t care about their patients.  

·         Interview #3:

o   This interview comes from a different perspective because it someone that has worked a desk of a doctor’s office for several years now. She says that it has made her so hardened and jaded because people are so ready to call you all types of thing over the phone. She also enlightened me on the fact that her only job all day is not just to call patients, but she also has to call insurance offices or other medical offices She has been put on hold but says that she doesn’t know what to do because it’s a loop of inconsistency with patient care and she knows that it is frustrating from both sides.

·         Interview #4:

o   This interview although not as insightful as the others is still important, it is the young male perspective on medical care. Which is minimal because in all honesty they would wait until there parent would make the appointment for them. The only thing they know is that they get a call from the office multiple times until they pick up.

·         Interview #5:

o   This interview was with a young woman here at UF that need to be using the doctor periodically because she has diabetes. She gets a slightly different treatment from doctors because she must be going in more often. Even with the very serious risk of her health she still has to be on top of calling them or they won’t get back to her on time, thankfully is very well managed so she does not have to worry as hard, but the check ins take her so much time that she has to schedule her day around that.

·         Given your interviews, what do you know about the opportunity that you didn’t know before?

o   The interviews were very helpful people love to tell stories, and all the stories that I was told had the same common theme of not being productive. Each one tried to get most of the situation, but they wasted so much of their time and to most Americans people are so worried about their time. People have so many things to do in a day and so many things to worry about that worrying about a call to see if their results are normal, causes unneeded stress to people. There are so many people that do not want anything to do with going to the doctor because they rather look for other remedies before having to waste time. People are also very open with the information that they share they want others to not go through the same as them and offered a wide array of solutions to the problem.