The 2 Minute Difference in Patient Care

Dr. Joshua Rosenberg discusses how 2 Minutes Can Mean the Difference
Between Life and Death

Two minutes means different things to each of us. However, two minutes of our time means everything to our patients. What if I told you it meant the difference between living and dying? Now what does two minutes mean to you? Lately we’ve been talking a lot about patient callbacks. Why? Because it is the right thing to do. Please allow me to tell you what physician discharge callbacks mean to me as a program director and divisional director. On second thought, let me tell you what it means to me as a physician.

This phone call gives us the opportunity to do something very special for our patient; something potentially lifesaving. It allows us to check in on them to ensure they followed our discharge instructions, and they are continuing to feel better. Occasionally I’ve learned my patient did not get their medication because it was too expensive and instead of contacting me they figured it wasn’t important and went home without it. We all know where this leads…straight back to the ER, or worse.

While our primary goal is patient safety, making this phone call also has another benefit – patient satisfaction. Patient satisfaction and HCAHPS scores are the measures which determine our success as hospitalists; especially now with Value Based Purchasing. Patients will see and learn we do care for them and they´re not just a number in a bed; surely this will have a positive impact on them when they receive their surveys . Remember, these are people whom we’ve never met before and may never see again. We don’t have the luxury of having a long relationship with our patients, so how could they possibly know how much we actually care for them unless we show them. "No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care!"

We, as hospitalists, have a very special opportunity in the healthcare industry right now. Due to the constraints placed on PCPs by insurance companies, patients feel like they are on a conveyor belt. We have the opportunity to put the "care" back into Healthcare. This is an initiative that has the potential to return rewards beyond any monetary benefit. There are no words for the feeling a patient gets when they believe they matter to their physician. Giving your patients this gift is almost as substantial as the one they give you – their lives. We, as medical students, worked for years in college, medical school and residency, but still forget to see this opportunity as a gift and look upon it as a burden. Remember, the only thing you are entitled to do in life is die and pay taxes; nowhere does it say because we´ve completed all this training we are entitled to have complete strangers trust us with their lives. But they do, day in and day out. We, as physicians, as Apogee Physicians owe it to our patients to ensure it is taken care of, not just until they walk out the door but beyond that as well.

I understand you are already busy, but is two minutes of your time worth someone else’s life? Would it be worth it if it was someone you cared about and someone else’s two minutes?

Please also remember this is a company-wide initiative and is only made possible through the efforts of everyone in Apogee working together; Physicians, Senior Leadership, IT, Human Resources, Risk Management, clerical personnel and our PICS. Thank you all for helping us to deliver the Apogee Promise to Every Patient Every Time.

Dr. Joshua Rosenberg
Program Director