Hospital Offers New Service: Customer Refunds


(Unrelated photo by Graham Mitchell)

Did you have an unsatisfactory customer service experience with the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania? Unlike a lot of hospitals, Geisinger is actively thinking about the patience experience as a customer one. It's created an app that lets customers voice their dissatisfaction and get refunds when they've met rude, careless, or otherwise inadequate hospital employees. The Washington Post reports:

One 49-year-old patient received a $210 refund in February after an appointment left her in tears. “Pt felt like they didn’t care and did not have her best interest at heart. Pt. stated she came to Geisinger b/c she trusted us, she has no trust now,” according to the financial authorization for the refund.

Karen Hull was upset, too, and not just over the chicken panini that took hours to be delivered after her successful surgery in January. Several weeks earlier, the Geisinger Medical Center finance department had blindsided the 46-year-old dental hygienist with a call for a “down payment” on her operation, for a herniated disc that had caused crippling pain.

“I remember thinking, it’s not like I’m going to skip out on my back surgery,” she said. She wound up paying $100 toward her $2,375 co-payment.

After she got home, she asked for a $150 refund — an amount that reflected her distress but didn’t make her look “hoggish.”

It's a novel approach to hospital care. But health care executive Ceci Connolly says that it shouldn't be:

“It is sad and ironic that a business that has decided to listen to its customers and be responsive and even occasionally refund some money is considered so out-of-the box,” Connolly noted.

-via Marginal Revolution


Comments (2)

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Newest 2 Comments

My local hospital demands a co-payment before surgery, or at least a credit card number they can hold. Yeah, they send out survey sheets afterward about your experience, but the idea of a refund would never come into it.
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This is a terrible idea unless they're planning to fully staff the hospital. Most nurses and hospital staff are overworked, and (if my mother is any indication) a lot of patients are unreasonably demanding.
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It seems just as likely to me that some entries on this list should instead be on "ten most bloodthirsty soldiers of all time"; or maybe "ten soldiers driven most obviously insane by the horrors of war".

Reader's choice. We are unlikely to actually know, after all.
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Wow. This is neat.
Can the next list be 'Who took the longest to die.' or some such.

Sometimes I just couldn't be bothered to sign in for these.
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Now, being ambushed and driving your Humvee directly at the enemy's entrenched position, after which you leap into the trench, shoot terrorists until you run out of bullets for your Marine-issue guns, then take two AK-47s and kill some more terrorists, and then you find a rocket-propelled grenade and blow the hell out of even more terrorists?

Yeah, the Iraqi invaders sure proved themselves to be total terrorists when they fought the brave US soldiers that were defending their homeland.
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No we humans defintely are not violent. We are peaceful beings.

This is best illustrated by our glorification of our fiercest bloodiest fighters.....

Wheeeee real Neat these killers!
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Hey Jill, tell my dad who fought in WWII that it's ancient history. These stories depict men who did what needed to be done at the time. Whether the conflict was right or wrong these soldiers were in a kill or be killed situation and they stepped up to save the lives of their fellow soldiers. War isn't pretty or neat but once the conflict is happening a soldier better do everything in their power to inflict casualties on the enemy because that is definitely what the enemy is trying to do.
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@D Bozko

Probably the first time I actually agree with you. They were defiantly strict times for everyone not in control of the situation. My grandfather on my mother's side fought for the side of Hungary, because if he didn't, he was shot and killed as a traitor. A more interesting story with my dad's side is his father trained as a pilot for Germany in WWI, and fought against Germany for Canada as a pilot in WWII.
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