I look at it this way. Anyone work in a restaurant? You do good service you still get a mother effer who'll complain and try to get a free meal. Yes this type of customer is extremely rare, but it happens.
You'll get patients complaining where you did no wrong. In defense of some of these patients they don't understand how medicine works. E.g. lots of family members get mad when you don't discuss your patient's private information.
This is a reason why I terminate patients if the dots connect and they're too troublesome. Anyone being rude to my assistant more than once without any reason that could justify their anger, we terminate that patient. The chronic headaches are when the patient did nothing wrong, and their family member is causing the irritation, cause if I terminate the patient I figure I'm punishing them for their family member.
At my practice, all of the doctors agreed to a master termination list for patients where we detected they were troublemakers. If we terminate a patient that patient cannot go to another doctor in the practice. Anyone new patient calling for an appointment is checked to see if they're in the troublemaker list.
Now here's an example of a troublemaker.
New patient arranges an appointment. First appointment he says there's no problems and he's just seeing a doctor to be evaluated. The psychiatrist asks several questions, does several screens and the patient denies any problems whatsoever.
So it's a few days later and his wife calls screaming at the office saying he's got Bipolar Disorder. She says the doctor was completely wrong to say he has no disorder and she's going to sue. She demands the records, the receptionist tells her there is no HIPAA clearance, and she says the assistant must comply because she's the guardian (seems unlikely, they're married, he wasn't disabled, he is employed and makes a comfortable living) so she's told if she's the guardian to produce legal papers proving it and she doesn't.
So it's then several days later and it turned out he was sent to the ER allegedly for being manic (we really don't know, this is all based on her allegation, drug-abuse? personality disorder, true mania?) and she calls back again saying this was further proof the doctor was wrong and you can hear her and him both screaming at each other. So then he comes over and asks for a copy of his records, cause he wants an evaluation saying he has no Bipolar Disorder. So the doctor tells the guy that the evaluation was only based on his answers and the doctor can only see what he sees in the office and that he denied any of the symptoms of the disorder but that doesn't prove he doesn't have it because he was only presented with the picture the patient presented to him. He asks for the ER visit records.
Now while this is happening, the wife walks into the waiting area while her husband is getting the records and they start screaming at each other. He shows her the report as if it's 100% proof he doesn't have Bipolar Disorder and they continue bickering.
At that point the doctor terminated him for causing a disruption and giving that doctor reason to believe the patient had his own agenda. He was added to the master-list of people never to take again as a patient.
So guess what? It's months later, and I'm the new medical director of brand new clinic. That couple brought their drama over to that place too and the pretty much same exact thing happened again! He arranged an appointment, told the clinician there was nothing wrong, the wife calls, says the same stuff (alleges she's the guardian, alleges she's going to sue).
So the clinic calls me up and tells me what happened and I didn't even know who these people were yet cause the doctor that terminated the patient at my private office never told me about it. I look up the patient's name in the master-termination list, I see his name, and I ask the doctor about it and WOW! We terminated that patient at the clinic too!
