Dealing With a Product Recall.
Facing a higher level of public awareness and with a more competitive environment, today’s contact lens companies are working harder than ever to ensure that they are prepared to manage the many communication dimensions in case of a product recall.
With Food Drug Administration policies and the Consumer product Safety Environment Act (CPSIA), medical device manufacturers including contact lens companies are accountable for effective performing a recall on their products in the event there is problem. It is worth noting that companies are also liable for the problems that led to a recall. In such, manufacturers can face strict penalties if FDA or regulators sense that a company has failed in the responsibility to notify consumers about recall. Similarly penalties can be levied if potentially dangerous products are not retrieved from the market in a timely fashion.
In this environment what can you as a practitioner do in the case when there is a product recall?
The keen practitioner will turn into the available media tools which can help in informing, educating and somewhat limiting legal risk by quickly marketing himself to maintain patient loyalty.
Today’s social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email communications, among others) provide a podium for promotion, marketing and brand management that can turn a product recall into a informational, education and marketing campaign that can improve your image and expand your patient base.
With the potential devastating effect that loss of vision can have, it is our responsibility to keep our patients engaged and informed. Our responsibility as doctors is to inform and educate our patients when there is a product recall. Social media tool provide a great venue to grow your practice and maintain a professional caring image.
There is more to integrating eformation (yes I made up that word e-formation) social media into a medical device recall than a Facebook update or a well timed tweet. In the past few months we have dealt with two contact lens recall that have shown us how to best maximize the potential of social media to protect our patients and keep our brand afloat in the chaos of a contact lens recall.
With recent product recalls, our office learned a few things that I would like to share.
First Plan and don’t panic. Before a recall, you should be aware of the many ways in which you can inform your patients of a product recall. I suggest developing a plan of action involving social media and effective patient communication such as email contacts with an emphasis on education and management in mind.
Things that should be planned include: how the staff would answer questions over the phone as well as how to script the email, twitter and Facebook messages. How and where should the patients be directed for more information. Should it be your office website or the manufacture website? Should your patients seek more information on the subject as well as report events to both the manufacture and the FDA? These are questions that should be addressed before a recall and you should plan ahead.
Think about how is your social media campaign can best be utilized for outreach and who will be monitoring responses.
During a recent contact lens recall, the quickness of our office in identifying those patients affected by the recall sent a serious but positive impression to those patients on how our offices delivers the services and how we support the products we deliver in our office.
Remember that information is easily available to today’s contact lens patients. Anyone will likely hear about any recall the day it is announced. We handled the information process in a very transparent way by providing links to the manufacturer recall notice as well as any FDA information. It is important that all information about the recall be readily available. Without you as the informative and authoritative voice in command, your patients will be left to make their own determinations. Furthermore, how your office handles these situations could help imprint the trust they put in you.
When the patient has questions you want to provide answers, educating the staff will be crucial in achieving a level of patient comfort while conveying your handling of the situation.
You can even use your office social media campaigns to further enable your patients to disseminate your message to others.
The one thing that you can do better than anyone for your patients is provide the best information available. Anyone person can post and disseminate accurate or inaccurate information on the internet. As providers of medical devices it is our responsibility to promote accurate information in a professional manner. Information about a recall is important specially if the implication is eye damage. You can use frequent Facebook updates, tweets, and other recall-related social media activity to serve as an expert information sources. The moment we knew about the recall we quickly sent an email blast to inform all patients of the recall, we provided the information we had and direct them to the manufacturer website for further information.
You can also use this opportunity to provide links to the FDA or the corporate website where a professional company has people in control over the messaging.
It is fundamental that the discussion be clear of what problems to expect as well as how your expertise can help those patients affected. It is also important to openly discuss steps or solutions you are willing to offer to help those patient that are affected.
During recent recalls, our office decided to take a proactive and aggressive role, this helped us become the expert in the message. We did not assume that a single Facebook post or one tweet telling your patients about the recall was enough, we wanted them to have information and pointed to where to go for information. We took this as an opportunity to show how our office can handle adversity and flourish. Our role during the recall was to quickly provide information and have solutions available, this maintained our practice image and proved to be a level of service beyond what our patients expects.
Even after all the patients have been accounted for, we continue to drive the message of contact lenses as medical devices and the potential dangers that a misused or abused contact lens can pose. We actively used the opportunity to show how our office systems and expertise can deliver services that keep us above the crowd.
Patients were alerted by email blast and many had gone to the website to verify the product they had was safe, those that identified the recalled product quickly contacted the office and steps where taken to be refitted into another product.
We quickly had identified all patients that had ordered contacts in our office patients and had made direct contact via phone about the situation. This made us control the message. Most patients where surprised and thankful that we were able to locate them. We quickly explain that as any other medical device, contacts are regulated by the FDA, explained the nature of the voluntary recall as well as the fact that the FDA had been informed.
Rahm Emanuel is quoted as saying “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste”, which brings me to the closing statement; one patient had bought contacts from an online retailer and coincidentally was not in our email database. She found out when she went to order a supply of contacts online that the product had been recalled. Hastily, she called the office complaining about the fact that she was unaware of the recall and she claimed her eyes were harmed. Our quick response was that we had informed all our patients that had been supplied contacts by our office and we quickly noted the fact that we had sent 4 email blasts and had called those patients that we knew where affected that had bought the product from our office.
Since there was no way to know the source of her product, and she had requested not to be in our email database, it was simply more difficult for us to be able to keep her eyes safe in an event like this. She quickly replied that going forward she would buy her products from us as she saw the value in the information and tracking that our office provided…