You know that area of your house outside where the phone, electric, gas, etc come into the house (basement)?  Well, do NOT try to use your weed whacker to clear out weeds.  The weed whacker might have problems cutting tall or wet grass, but it chews right through the outer coating of your phone line.  It’s actually a delicate “chewing”, since it just exposes the copper wire to the rain and snow, so that the phone failure takes 4.75 months to happen.  By that time, you have forgotten that you meant to call to have the gnarled up wiring fixed in a routine, non-emergent fashion.

Do any of you know what happens when you call to get phone service fixed?  Yep, it is very much like trying to get an urgent (but not emergent) medical condition addressed by the primary care doctor you have not seen in 6 years.  You go through voice prompt systems, type in you phone or medical number 50 times, and finally talk to someone who tells you that someone else will call you back about the plan…  All that seems understandable, since these customer service people need to be efficient with their time and that of the professionals that they protect, er, help manage finite resources.  You realize the problem, though, when the first person can’t tell you who the second person is, or how to call that person if they don’t call.  Worse yet, you miss their call and you go the “back of the line”, even though you have given them every cell and land line number you own.

Like delayed flights in the last blog post, human factors engineering analysis can give us some clues about design features to improve timeliness of care (or return to phone service).

1) Offer the same ability to track your process as Fed Ex gives you to track your $29 vase of roses.

2) At the risk of being a broken record:  offer clear alternatives to give choice to fit a person’s need.  Offer a phone message every 4 hours, or text, or email…  Or, give a direct number to call if they have not called in X amount of time.

3) Offer up a web page form so you can enter the key details about your medical condition (or phone disaster).  I see why this is avoided, since clinics worry they would be liable for reacting slowly to ominous symptoms.  Okay, but there needs to be a better method than verbally, and less systematically, having someone go over the same story.  Think of this as trying to design stuff to create the best shared model about what is going on, and what should we do next.