I have always been an ardent observer of people. I love to watch people in amusement parks, for example. People wear some crazy things. People do some crazy things.

When it comes to business, people do some crazy things too. For example, I have an account with a water company to provide our offices with drinking water. This week I received a notice from them that my credit card transaction didn’t go through. They wanted me to fill out a new form and pay them a $15 service fee. I checked with the credit card company and figured out what was wrong and called the water company to inform them that the card would go through fine now. They processed the amount and it went through without a problem. Since the problem was not my fault, I asked them to remove the $15 fee. They refused.

Here is the point that I want to make. When faced with their refusal to reverse the $15 fee, I asked them to close my account. The young lady on the other end of the phone said the most amazing thing. She said incredulously “you are going to close your account over $15?” I almost laughed in her face. What a stupid comment! Yes, I am willing to lose a vendor over $15, but they are willing to give up a faithful customer who has used them for years over $15.

I bring this up because the water business and the radiology business are not that different. Do we lose patients and clients because of annoying little business practices? Are we running our businesses with inefficiencies built into the system that aggravate people? In this day and age with declining reimbursements and strong competition, can we afford to run our businesses with such foolish shortsightedness as the customer service rep for the water company? I would suggest we can’t. If we do, before too long, someone is going to come in a shut us down. It’s inevitable.

The lesson? Look at all of your business processes today and see if there are built in inefficiencies or annoyances. Try and look at things the way your customers and patients will see them. If you want, Dexios will be glad to look at your billing process. There’s a 50% chance that yours is below average (sorry, but that’s just the way statistics work). If there isn’t a problem, great! If there is a problem, at least you will know and will have the option to fix it.