Customer Experience

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What Is Patient Experience and Strategies for Improvement

<h1><span style="font-weight: 400;">Patient Experience: The Ultimate Guide for Healthcare Businesses</span></h1>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Healthcare organizations are more than just businesses. They play a vital role in their patients&#8217; lives, health and future, depending on the quality of care they receive. High-quality care isn’t just about finding the right treatment for the patient but how care is delivered to the patient. The patient experience is a major factor in the success of healthcare facilities so let’s take a closer look at it. </span></p>
<h2><span style="font-weight: 400;">What is patient experience?</span></h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The patient experience amounts to the delivery of healthcare services across the board from </span><a href="https://www.podium.com/article/healthcare-automation/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">interactions</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> with clinicians, communication with staff, the continuum of care between primary care clinicians and specialists, and the efforts put towards formulating a health plan and working towards health outcomes. The sum of all interactions can either create a positive patient experience or a negative one.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While care delivery aims to deal with illness, disease and wellbeing, healthcare professionals cannot forget the human experience. Instead of reducing patients to their health issues, embracing patient-centered care improves the patient experience.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It’s worth noting that patient experience and patient satisfaction are not the same thing. A good patient experience can foster a high level of patient satisfaction. But not always as the patient’s expectations need to be met for them to give a high rating of their medical care. Therefore, the patient perspective should drive the patient experience. </span></p>
<h2><span style="font-weight: 400;">Why is patient experience important?</span></h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">How care is delivered and the experience it creates for patients really matters, both to the happiness of patients and the success of the healthcare business. Here are some of the main reasons why investing in patient experience is well worth it.</span></p>
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">1. Boosts your bottom line.</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A high patient satisfaction rating is profitable. So investing in an experience that makes patients happy will pay off. Patients are looking for </span><a href="https://www.podium.com/article/dominate-local-healthcare-search/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">healthcare facilities</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that take their experience into account. That means the better the patient experience clinicians deliver, the easier it will be to attract new patients and retain current patients. </span></p>
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">2. Improves your reputation.</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A great way to attract new patients is through recommendations. Current patients will only recommend healthcare services to friends and family, through word of mouth or leaving online reviews, if they have an exceptional experience. So a good healthcare experience builds an attractive reputation that the business will benefit from.</span></p>
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">3. Increases patient engagement.</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To be able to achieve health outcomes and follow through on healthcare plans, patients need to be engaged with their treatment. Whether this means taking medication according to schedule, committing to regular exercises or turning up to an appointment with specialist clinicians, patients need to comply with their treatment plan. A positive healthcare experience with clear communication and a continuum of care motivates patients to engage in their own treatment.</span></p>
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">4. Enhances your outcomes.</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">With streamlined processes for delivering patient-centered care and patients engaged with their treatment, positive health outcomes are much more likely to be achieved. Business outcomes are also improved as customer retention increases, patients are happy to recommend your healthcare services and new customers are attracted to the business, fostering growth. </span></p>
<h2><span style="font-weight: 400;">How to Improve Patient Experience: 5 Strategies</span></h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To meet patient expectations, foster patient satisfaction and enjoy the benefits of a good patient experience, there are some strategies healthcare facilities can implement. Let’s go through them.</span></p>
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">1. Analyze your patient data.</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As a good patient experience comes from meeting patient expectations, start by collecting information on the patient perspectives of the business currently. Data can be collected in multiple ways such as through patient experience surveys and focus groups where patients are asked to share their feedback. Or healthcare facilities could leverage digitization, using devices to collect real-time metrics about the customer journey and any blockages in the system.</span></p>
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">2. Improve patient communication.</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Patients get frustrated by a lack of communication, preventing them from feeling supported by their clinicians. Working on bringing together patients and their care teams will enable communication to flow much more freely. They’ll know what’s going on and why and can be reassured if they have any concerns.</span></p>
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">3. Take advantage of technology and software.</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Introducing a </span><a href="https://www.podium.com/article/patient-engagement/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">digital platform</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> can meet a lot of needs. Patients can get in contact with their care team, check their health plan and make appointments with ease. Key documentation like health records can be made available through this kind of software because it has a high level of security, protecting patient safety. Measures of patient experience can be integrated into the software as well for constant data-driven quality improvement.</span></p>
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">4. Review, improve, and streamline your business principles.</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Any changes should be made in line with the business vision, mission and values, creating consistency. This is a great opportunity to review the business principles, using them as a jumping-off point to decide what initiatives to implement and KPIs to measure in order to improve the patient experience. Business principles can also unite the healthcare team, enabling a continuum of care and improving employee experience which will have a positive ripple effect on patient experience.</span></p>
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">5. Work on employee engagement.</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Employee engagement is key to delivering high-quality medical care and ensuring all interactions are positive. From liaising with staff to consultations with clinicians, all these interactions add to the patient experience and will be made better by engaging employees with the business. Ensure they have the time and support to perform at their best, for example, reviewing health records before appointments, listening carefully to patient concerns and walking patients through treatment plans.</span></p>
<h2><span style="font-weight: 400;">How to Reach More Patients</span></h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Talking of leveraging digital tools, healthcare businesses have achieved major success by using our marketing tools to reach new customers, streamline communication and build a strong online reputation. From making it easier to gather online reviews to introducing text marketing to keep patients up to date, here’s how we can help your healthcare business thrive.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Podium supports every element of creating a better patient experience. Leverage patient satisfaction by building your Google Reviews profile with a constant stream of recent and </span><a href="https://www.podium.com/article/top-healthcare-review-sites/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">positive reviews</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Our online review management tool makes establishing a good online reputation and attracting new patients easy.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Communication is key to positive clinical outcomes in the healthcare industry. Streamline the process with our text messaging service. Instead of having to wait on the phone, patients can arrange and manage their appointments (as well as other elements of their healthcare experience) with ease over text.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">How about payments? Cash flow is essential in any business. Podium payments enable you to get paid faster. It even integrates with our text messaging service so patients get reminders and direct links to complete payments over text.</span></p>


What Is Patient Experience and Strategies for Improvement

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