Boston University Medical Center (BMC) is staffed ...

Boston University Medical Center (BMC) is staffed by wonderful workers who care about the health of their patients and work to cultivate relationships that encourage those patients to feel comfortable sharing important information that is pertinent to their medical care. As a hospital, it has a lot of potential to take care of some of the Commonwealth s neediest patients.

However, it is deeply flawed as an institution, even by BU s typically high standards. From my perspective, it seems to be undermined by administration that pushes efficiency and financial viability over common sense patient care. Doctors seem forced to see patients quickly, and are almost always overbooked, yet somehow run an hour behind. BMC for some time now has moved their call centers out of the building. That s right: if you call to speak to your primary care physician, the person who answers the phone IS NOT EVEN IN THE SAME BUILDING. All you can have them do is put in a note and wait for someone to call back. Up until BMC, I ve never heard of the concept of calling your doctors office and having the phone picked up by someone down the street. I m sorry, but that s not world class medical service, and it can lead to misunderstandings (being booked for an urgent care appointment in a woman s health clinic, then facing getting turned away as a male because the individual who put the appointment in was not aware of it being a woman s health clinic, something the receptionist acknowledged was not infrequent).

BMC has a big challenge on its shoulders: take care of a high volume of patients, many of whom have public insurance with bad reimbursement rates, but also stay profitable. Admins need to be more mindful about how their decisions impact the perception of the quality of patient care. Then I think they d see a higher volume of patients with private insurance and far better reimbursement rates.

UPDATE: Take a look at their form-fill, generic response. Anyone who thinks calling a number will change anything is at best naive.