Before the Pudding
During my 15 years in the paramedical field, there was an increasing trend to log more data in patient files and track outcome measures. On an individual basis, this was used to track whether clients were making progress. If not, you had to correct the course.
That’s very useful, though time-consuming if you track too many outcome measures (e.g., ones that do not truly matter or are only a derivative of the real problem) or track them too often.
Excellence is usually self-evident. You’ll know it when you see it. (Just like Bull💩)
If you are working on a health-related problem, the person having that problem usually knows just fine if they are improving and doing better without measuring or filling in questionnaires every other week.
So, the one metric to track is very simple: Are you improving on the thing that is or was bothering you? Can you move harder, better, or faster? Are you getting stronger? Is there less discomfort or pain?
The proof is in the pudding.
In order for that to happen, the proof has to come before the pudding.
Indicating wether a health-care provider is “any good” at what he or she is doing, would then be measured by their succes rate. How many of the clients they set out to help, actually improve over time? I don’t think a 100% rate is attainable over the long term. On the other hand, anything close to 50% would probably not be worth your time, effort and money.
A high succes rate, would require a health-care provider to exclude some clients. To say to some, I’m sorry but I don’t think I am the one who can best help you with this problem. (“Go see Person X or Y who is the best” would be an excellent advice!)
This is not about a few 5-star reviews; this is about exclusively having 5-star reviews. No filter, no bias. Therefore, those reviews should be in a public place and available to anyone. It is not just reviews that the health care provider has carefully selected and displayed on his or her website.
To put my money on the line, you can leave me a review here. Thanks for taking the effort.
