We are all familiar with the term “Patient Experience”. The patient experience describes how a patient gets treated by healthcare providers. A shift toward patient-centered treatment includes a greater emphasis on patient experience.

Patient Experience

The total patient experience measures how satisfied or dissatisfied individuals are with their healthcare treatment throughout their entire journey. There are four key components of patient experience that are as follows:-

• The total number of interactions

A patient's perceptions of their healthcare provider are influenced by all of the touchpoints along with the patient experience, with each one playing a role in shaping their perceptions.

• The culture of a company is important

The vision and values of an organization at all levels are critical in providing safe, convenient, and competent healthcare.

• Patients’ perspectives

This refers to what patients recognize, understand, and recall. It is important to understand that each patient’s perceptions will be influenced by their own circumstances, beliefs, values, and cultural background.

• Continuity of care

A patient’s interaction with the healthcare system begins long before they require treatment and continues long after clinical outcomes or interactions.

Every healthcare practitioner wishes they could spend more time with patients, and they make every effort to do so. However, even minor details can have a significant impact on how patients perceive the healthcare provider.

It is more crucial than ever to provide a great patient experience. Not only is it the proper thing to do, but it also has a positive impact on one’s health. This is a win-win situation for both healthcare practitioners and their patients.

According to research, “96% of healthcare customers realize patient experience as extremely important in selecting their healthcare provider”.

Effective ways to improve patient feedback

1. Establish a great online presence

The initial impression healthcare provider makes on potential patients is through their online presence, which includes their healthcare website and local directory profiles.

Make sure the website pages provide clear, consistent information to help patients understand what to anticipate from your practice. Make sure healthcare profiles on significant online business and healthcare directories are complete and linked to the website.

2. Send confirmations and reminders for appointments

Appointment confirmations and reminders help the patients stay in touch with healthcare practice. For appointment-related reminders, the vast majority of patients prefer to receive details via text messaging over other patient engagement options.

After booking, send confirmations through email or SMS, and then send a reminder before a scheduled appointment asking them to confirm.

3. Reduce the waiting time

A short wait is understandable, but patients grow irritated when they believe healthcare professionals are not respecting their schedule by keeping them waiting for long periods of time.

If you know the doctor to be late, make sure your team informs patients about how long they may anticipate waiting. They will be grateful as it will show them that the healthcare team cares about their patient’s timing.

4. Show that healthcare professionals are concerned about their patient’s needs and health

Did the healthcare expert clean their stethoscope and wash their hands in front of the patient, or did he do it behind their back? This can make a tremendous difference for patients, especially if they can hear a patient with a hacking cough in the adjacent examination room.

As a health professional, understand the importance of excellent cleanliness for the patient’s well-being. Examine their office through the eyes of a patient to ensure that they are showing the kind of cleanliness that demonstrates genuine concern for the patient’s health.

5. Conduct a survey to follow up on appointments

Use meaningful touchpoints to interact with patients after the visit to show them you value their feedback. Patients are less likely to complete a survey on their own, thus sending automated patient satisfaction surveys by SMS or email will result in more involvement.

Sending a survey soon after a visit is the greatest way to obtain feedback because the visit is still fresh in the person’s mind.

6. Respond to online feedback as soon as possible

It is important to respond to both positive and negative feedback of the patients. Patients will trust healthcare experts more if they respond thoughtfully and show that they care about their experiences with their healthcare practice.

Final thoughts

A positive patient experience is influenced by a number of things. Taking the required efforts to provide a positive experience for your patients will improve patient satisfaction, which will lead to increased patient retention and more positive online reviews.

Dropthought

At Dropthought, We feel that in order to create a long-term relationship with a patient, we must value their feedback.

We believe in developing a situation-based and feedback-driven patient and employee engagement strategy that will not only assist healthcare organizations in maximizing the data collected but will also if done correctly, turn into a long-term opportunity to keep your audience engaged and revenue flowing. Throughout their treatment journey, your patients can submit feedback and suggestions via questionnaires regarding your overall services.