Healthcare Customer Service

What happens when Black patients question their Black doctor. A real life example. Every week, he arrived with a notebook of questions. "This says you should be doing X instead." "I found a study that questions this treatment." "Are you sure this is the best option?" He was determined to prove I wasn't giving him the right care. Testing me. Challenging every assessment. Some colleagues would call this difficult. Non-compliant. I called it survival. He'd learned what history teaches: medical degrees don't guarantee medical care. Not for people who look like him. So he armed himself with printouts. Protected himself with questions. Week after week, he questioned me. Week after week, he showed up. Week after week, he followed my treatment plan. That's the part that taught me everything. He wasn't refusing care. He was negotiating trust. Following my recommendations while fact-checking them. Complying while verifying. Six months in, the articles became conversations instead of confrontations. "Never stop questioning," I told him. "Never stop advocating for yourself." I offered and encouraged a second opinion. His eyes widened. A doctor encouraging pushback? But his mistrust wasn't personal. It was historical. Generational. Earned through Tuskegee, through Henrietta Lacks, through emergency rooms where his pain was dismissed. When Black patients question my credentials, they're not questioning me. They're questioning a system that's failed them repeatedly. My patient taught me that building trust means making room for distrust. That healing happens when patients feel safe enough to challenge their doctors. He still brings a laundry list of questions sometimes. Now we review them together. To every Black patient who Googles symptoms before trusting your doctor: Keep going. To every physician challenged by questioning patients: That's not resistance. That's resilience. Trust isn't owed. It's earned. One appointment, one answered doubt at a time. That's how we rebuild healthcare Beyond The Clinic. #HealthEquity #PatientAdvocacy #MedicalTrust #BeyondTheClinic

How To Handle Sensitive Information in your next AI Project It's crucial to handle sensitive user information with care. Whether it's personal data, financial details, or health information, understanding how to protect and manage it is essential to maintain trust and comply with privacy regulations. Here are 5 best practices to follow: 1. Identify and Classify Sensitive Data Start by identifying the types of sensitive data your application handles, such as personally identifiable information (PII), sensitive personal information (SPI), and confidential data. Understand the specific legal requirements and privacy regulations that apply, such as GDPR or the California Consumer Privacy Act. 2. Minimize Data Exposure Only share the necessary information with AI endpoints. For PII, such as names, addresses, or social security numbers, consider redacting this information before making API calls, especially if the data could be linked to sensitive applications, like healthcare or financial services. 3. Avoid Sharing Highly Sensitive Information Never pass sensitive personal information, such as credit card numbers, passwords, or bank account details, through AI endpoints. Instead, use secure, dedicated channels for handling and processing such data to avoid unintended exposure or misuse. 4. Implement Data Anonymization When dealing with confidential information, like health conditions or legal matters, ensure that the data cannot be traced back to an individual. Anonymize the data before using it with AI services to maintain user privacy and comply with legal standards. 5. Regularly Review and Update Privacy Practices Data privacy is a dynamic field with evolving laws and best practices. To ensure continued compliance and protection of user data, regularly review your data handling processes, stay updated on relevant regulations, and adjust your practices as needed. Remember, safeguarding sensitive information is not just about compliance — it's about earning and keeping the trust of your users.

If you want to understand why healthcare is so hard, don’t look inside the clinic. Look at what happens after the patient leaves. That’s where most care plans fall apart. I’ve been thinking a lot about this in my own clinical work— What do I do for the patient who needs daily sitz baths… but lives in a trailer without a bathroom? What do I do for the pregnant patient with concerning blood pressure… who can’t go to labor & delivery because she has no one to care for her other children? What do I do for the patient who needs a follow-up biopsy… but has no insurance and no realistic way to pay for what comes next? What do I do for the patient diagnosed with cancer… who has no transportation, no support system, and no one to help them through surgery, chemo, and recovery? These are not edge cases. This is everyday medicine. We are trained to diagnose and treat disease. But, we can’t treat disease without addressing the conditions people are living in. What happens outside the clinic—access, resources, time, support, stability—often matters more than what happens inside it. AI will help us do many things better. But it won’t fix fragmented systems nor build social networks and community support. It won’t solve the daily tradeoffs patients are forced to make. If we want a sustainable path forward, we have to build systems that are resourced to meet patients where they are—not just where we expect them to be. Because healthcare isn’t just clinical... It’s human.

Treat the Patient, Not the Image It‘s easy to get drawn into the intricate details of diagnostic imaging. An MRI like this one might reveal structural changes in the spine, but what it doesn’t show is the patient’s pain, function, and life impact. Imaging is a tool, not the whole story. A bulging disc or degenerative changes might seem alarming on the scan, but they don’t always correlate with pain or dysfunction. That’s why it’s critical to treat the person in front of you, not just the picture. Our role goes beyond diagnostics—we assess movement, understand the patient’s goals, and design a personalized plan to help them regain their confidence and quality of life. Always remember: the most important “image” we interpret is how a patient moves, feels, and lives.

Trust is becoming the most important medicine we have. Not because we have run out of treatments. Not because innovation has slowed. In fact, medicine has never been more capable. But in a world of infinite information, trust has become the scarce resource. Patients today can access medical advice from search engines, social media influencers, podcasts, wearable devices, and increasingly, AI tools. Some of that information is valuable. Some of it is misleading. Much of it is impossible for patients to evaluate on their own. Yet one finding remains remarkably consistent: physicians continue to be among the most trusted sources of health information. A recent KFF survey found that Americans trust their own doctors far more than government officials, social media, or other sources when it comes to health information. That trust is not automatic. It is earned one conversation at a time. Trust is built when physicians listen before they speak. When they acknowledge uncertainty. When they explain not only what they recommend, but why. When they recognize that patients are often trying to navigate fear, confusion, and conflicting information. The future of health care will undoubtedly involve AI. But the goal should not be to replace the physician-patient relationship. It should be to strengthen it. Technology can provide answers. Trust helps people act on them. And in the years ahead, our ability to improve health outcomes may depend less on whether information is available and more on whether people believe it. Trust is not a soft issue in medicine. It is a clinical one. #Trust #HealthCare #Physicians #AI #PublicHealth #Leadership

What exactly can healthcare leaders learn from patients? I had a heart transplant a few years ago. Being a patient-doctor has given me some perspective I didn’t have before, and I think we can sometimes benefit from hearing more directly from people who’ve had to "live" inside the system. Here are a few things I’ve learned that might be useful: - Clear, simple care helps everyone. Even when patients understand the medical language, fatigue, brain fog, & multiple inputs can make it hard to keep track. What looks like “non-adherence” perhaps sometimes stems from having to manage too much at once. - Misalignment between teams is common. Patients often get different messages depending on who they talk to, even during the same hospital stay. In my opinion, improving internal communication can help affect outcomes & even patient behavior. - Waiting is a big part of the patient experience, and it can feel like being stuck in limbo. ⏰ I know clinicians aren’t trying to delay care. In fact, many of us are juggling a lot at once without enough hours in a day to finish everything. Still, even small gaps in communication can add stress. It’s worth understanding when and where these delays happen most. - Small interactions shape how patients feel about care. The basic things, like someone introducing themselves or explaining what’s happening in plain language, is so important in helping reduce anxiety. 💯 - Discharge planning usually doesn’t cover everything. 🚗 After hospitalization, there are still many loose ends (like medication access, symptom monitoring, emotional adjustment, etc). Patients who are stable enough to go home aren’t necessarily prepared for what comes next. A follow-up system that works well can make a big difference. - Patients + advocates should be involved in designing new systems. They often notice issues that may not be visible from within. Their input isn’t meant to challenge. Rather, it should add perspective. Not every idea will be actionable, but including these voices can hopefully lead to more thoughtful, well-rounded solutions. One quick aside: I’ve found that many healthcare workers who become patients end up shifting their own approach to care. That experience stays with them. But ideally, we don't all have to be patients to design better systems. We could just listen more to the ones who already are. 😊 #patientadvocacy #womeninmedicine #medtech #healthcareleaders

Imagine scheduling a healthcare consultation and instantly triggering a comprehensive summary of your entire medical history, seamlessly available to your doctor. After your visit, prescriptions are automatically routed to pharmacies, and insurance claims are pre-verified and swiftly processed, creating real-time, frictionless coordination across multiple departments. Welcome to the era of agentic AI. Unlike its predecessor, which responded passively to prompts, agentic AI introduces autonomy, adaptability, and intelligence into customer service workflows, reshaping the function from the ground up. Which is now being referred to as the “gen AI paradox” The McKinsey & Company report "Seizing the Agentic AI Advantage" explains that the generative AI era has encountered a paradox. Despite 78% of companies deploying generative AI in at least one business function, more than 80% have not yet experienced a significant impact on their bottom line. The problem is that most deployments have been "horizontal" (general-purpose chatbots and copilots that provide only surface-level efficiencies). Agentic AI breaks this mold by enabling "vertical" transformation (embedding intelligence directly into complex business processes, including customer service). Unlike traditional models, agentic AI addresses the value gap by integrating advanced reasoning, autonomy, and adaptability into mission-critical workflows, fundamentally transforming how customer service is delivered and experienced. 🔹Proactive Issue Detection: Agentic AI anticipates and resolves problems like service outages or delays before customers even notice, shifting support from reactive to preemptive. 🔹Autonomous Problem Resolution: Routine issues such as refunds or reorders are handled automatically, freeing up human agents for higher-value work. 🔹Personalized Customer Interactions: Every engagement is dynamically tailored using real-time data, boosting satisfaction and enhancing deeper customer loyalty. Companies that reimagine their customer service operations around agentic AI report remarkable outcomes: 🔹Resolution times reduced by 60-90% 🔹Up to 80% of routine issues are handled without human involvement This shift elevates the human roles, transforming organizational roles: 🔹Human agents transition into overseeing complex or exceptional cases, becoming strategic managers rather than task executors. 🔹New specialized roles emerge, including agent orchestrators, prompt engineers, and human-in-the-loop designers, ensuring strategic human-AI collaboration. Agentic AI is completely rethinking how organizations operate, serve, and scale, and I am excited to see what’s next in customer service. See the full Agentic AI report on the carousel. #CustomerService #AgenticAI #DigitalTransformation #AI  

I have had these thoughts in my notes for a while, but my work with UNICEF Jamaica has brought them to the forefront of my mind again. "Trust is not something that can be requested or gained through grand gestures; it is built through the ordinary details of care. It develops through the way someone is greeted, whether their concerns are taken seriously, whether information is explained clearly and whether promises of confidentiality are upheld. It is strengthened when young people feel that they can speak honestly without being patronised or punished. These interactions may appear small from an organisational perspective, but they can determine whether someone returns, recommends the service to a friend or decides to avoid healthcare in the future."

Last year, I realized something that surprised me. Patients weren’t coming to hospitals for answers first. They were going to the internet. Google. TikTok. Social feeds. Influencers. And many times, they trusted those platforms more than trained professionals. At first, it felt worrying. How do you compete with the entire internet? Then I noticed something important. Patients weren’t choosing the internet because it was more accurate. They were choosing it because it was: • Easier to understand • Faster to access • Less intimidating • More human So instead of fighting it… I changed the question from: “How do we stop patients searching online?” to “How do we become the most trusted voice online?” And that shift changed everything. We simplified how we communicate. We educated instead of instructing. We focused on clarity instead of complexity. We made trust the priority, not paperwork. Slowly, something happened. Conversations improved. Understanding improved. Confidence improved. And trust began to return. Not overnight. Quietly. Consistently. This year, my focus is simple: Don’t compete with the internet. Become the reliable voice people trust. Because when leaders choose clarity and care… Healthcare starts to feel human again. P.S. Want the research showing what percentage of patients search online before seeing a doctor? DM me and I’ll share it with you. #healthcare #fixhealthcare #digitalhealth #patientstrust

During a recent conversation with the patient services team at one of Singapore’s largest hospitals, they shared an interesting navigation issue: Patients often call whichever of the hospital’s 20-plus phone numbers gets answered first, even when it isn’t the department equipped to help them. Each department has its own line, and the list on the website isn’t even exhaustive. So a patient may call one number, explain the situation, get redirected, call another department, and repeat the same story again. The hospital is organized around departments, specialties, and operational teams. The patient is simply trying to get help. They shouldn’t need to understand the internal structure of a large healthcare organization before they can reach the right person. This is why we are helping our clients work toward a “no wrong door” policy. Wherever the patient enters, the system should be able to understand what they need, preserve the context of the conversation, and guide the request into the right workflow. That could begin with a phone call, WhatsApp message, website inquiry, or email. The channel may change. The patient shouldn’t have to start over. A connected system should help staff see what has already happened, where the request belongs, and what needs to happen next. For patients, the experience should feel much simpler: Call any number. Explain the situation once. Trust that the organization will take it from there. Every call should be the right call.