Patient Experience
What is Patient Experience?
Patient experience refers to the combination of interactions, perceptions and emotions encountered by a patient throughout their time receiving medical treatment or care from a healthcare facility. This encompasses all facets of the patient journey. In the healthcare industry, the level of patient experience is one of the primary indicators for the long-term success of a healthcare business.
Some examples of touchpoints in the agent experience include:
- Appointment booking
- The wait for an appointment
- Admission process
- Doctor and healthcare staff interactions
- Treatment and care
- Pain management
- Overnight stay conditions
- Food provided
- Follow up and checkups
- Treatment and medicine pricing
- Ease of insurance claims
Each touchpoint constitutes and contributes to the overall patient experience.
How to measure Patient Experience
An integral component of improving patient experience is first being able to measure patient perception and sentiment accurately. In order to determine overall patient satisfaction, feedback must be gathered and analysed regularly.
Collecting actionable feedback through patient surveys can be used to establish a measurable patient satisfaction score. The survey typically requests patients to rate their satisfaction out of five. This is the metric which most accurately represents the overall satisfaction of patients with the treatment and care they have received.
The overall patient satisfaction score can be found by calculating the average of all patient ratings: All ratings/the maximum score x 100 = Patient satisfaction score. As best practice, facilities can take one step further by conducting Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys to determine the likelihood of patients recommending their hospital or clinic to others.
How to improve Patient Experience
Improving patient experience is a continuous process influenced by technological advancement, changing patient expectations and the individual resources of a healthcare facility at a given time. Below are some of the benefits of investing in patient experience.
Establish a patient feedback system
The first step in improving patient experience is implementing a system to ensure patients feedback on their individual experiences. This feedback serves as the fundamental basis for process improvement.
Simplify patient processes
With the consideration that many patients will be suffering due to illness in mind, it’s often best to keep processes simple for patients at risk of adding to their discomfort. This means all booking, admission, insurance claim and payment process should be seamless and streamlined when possible.
Reduce waiting times
Long waiting periods are an important factor in determining patient experience. Ensuring the booking process is seamless and accurate is pivotal in mitigating long waits for patients.
Hygiene and Cleanliness
These two factors are a vital influence not only on patients experience, but their wellbeing as well. Ensuring all areas on the premises are properly maintained and sanitised is a requisite for the patient experience.
Treat patients with empathy and compassion
Empathy and good healthcare are mutually exclusive. Treating patients with empathy is crucial in providing positive patient experiences and often leads to better outcomes for the clients health.
Follow up with patients
Follow up with patients after treatment to monitor how they’re recovering and identify any arising issues. This mitigates the risk of repeated illness, ensures patients make a fully recovery and demonstrates commitment to patient wellbeing.
Prevent unwarranted patient testing and expenditure
Some healthcare facilities recommend additional tests for patients that are ultimately unnecessary. This leads to avoidable financial strain for the patient in some cases, causing additional stress which can further detract from patient wellbeing. Furthermore, excessive testing that isn’t required will diminish patient confidence in the ability of doctors to accurately diagnose, subsequently decreasing profits over time.
Benefits of Patient Experience
For healthcare providers, patient health and wellbeing must be top priority at all times. When this approach taken, there is an abundance of benefits for the sustainability and growth of the facility. Some of which are outlined below.
- Patient Loyalty: Trust is paramount for patients when deciding on a healthcare provider. Once it’s been established, the likelihood of return visits increases greatly along with the chances of word-of-mouth (WOM) referral.
- Better recovery and health outcomes: Quality patient experience not only provides patients with a trusted and reliable environment to go when they’re unwell, but also directly increases their rate of recovery. This is due to the twofold physical and mental benefits of receiving comprehensive support and aftercare.
- Trusted Reputation: Providing consistently comprehensive support and care for patients cultivates a reputation as a trustworthy facility for patients to visit. Over time, this reputation will solidify through word of mouth and online reviews.
- Increase new patients: Building a reputation as a trustworthy healthcare provider has a direct impact on new patient acquisition courtesy of positive online and word of mouth reviews. This subsequently increases overall revenue and profit.
- Mitigate Lawsuits: Misdiagnoses, malpractice and negative patient experiences all have the potential to merit lawsuits against doctors or the facility. Ensuring quality patient experience and care greatly diminishes the likelihood of lawsuits even in the case of difficult health outcomes.
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