Healthcare professionals have a long history of being taken advantage of and held hostage by IT consultants. Because their training and experience are generally not related to IT, those who help with marketing, computer systems, and other ‘technical’ aspects of the business either assume that medical professionals don’t understand their technical systems or else the providers are just too lazy to bother to learn and break it down for us so that the client can understand it.
If you hire a marketing consultant and ask for a monthly report, a budget breakdown, or some information about where your website traffic is coming from, you should receive a prompt response from your marketing team with actual data to answer your questions. Sounds obvious, right? But you don’t always get those answers if you're in Healthcare. All too often, questions about IT systems and marketing strategies get a response equal to “That’s really complicated, and you wouldn’t understand it anyway."
What’s worse, when you threaten to switch providers your service provider tries to hold you hostage! Have you ever heard, “If you leave us, your phones will stop ringing, your website will break, and your systems will all fail.”? As though they are the only people in the world who can run your network or website?! Healthcare providers get this all the time. It’s ridiculous, and it has to stop.
At Meticulosity, we work with several clients in healthcare and medical services, and we hear these stories of nightmare IT providers repeatedly. It’s just not right. As a business owner/operator, it’s essential that you know what is happening with your website, marketing campaigns, and information systems. You should be able to ask any questions at any time and get real answers without being belittled for your questions. A good service provider will not only give you those answers but also educate you on what they mean so that you learn more in the process.
Being a doctor doesn’t exclude you from knowing a thing or two about IT or marketing, and anyone who treats you like it does should be fired.