With only 1 in 3 Americans expressing satisfaction or extreme happiness with their healthcare services, the urgency of this issue cannot be overstated. Recent surveys from MDVIP/IPSOS have unveiled alarming statistics, Enhancing patient experience within the healthcare sector.
While it’s true that some individual providers are excelling in their roles, there is a clear opportunity for improvement across the board. This potential for enhancement should not only serve as a source of hope but also ignite a sense of motivation for all healthcare professionals, inspiring them to strive for better patient experiences.
If you are delivering the care needed and expected, you can guarantee that someone else will. In the modern world, patients equate the customer experience with customer service in retail and hospitality, and they demand the highest quality services regardless of how they interact with a business.
But for healthcare, there is an even greater onus to get things right, as you can literally deal with life and death.
This post will examine different ways to improve the patient experience and offer a higher standard of care in your practice.
Map The Patients Journey
So, while the ‘patient journey’ might look different for each provider, the actual elements of the journey are the same. The ‘patient journey’ in healthcare refers to the steps a patient must take, which are inevitably consistent regardless of the provider they deal with. A patient must seek care, access care, pay a bill, or receive ongoing care, etc. These are fundamental aspects of their journey. While other steps will personalize this experience, the basics will remain the same across the board.
Looking at how each patient experiences each step on their journey with you can enable you to evaluate the process from their perspective so you can make necessary changes and adaptations for them at a basic level.
Identify Moment of Truth
A Bain survey found that patients often experience ‘moments of truth’ in their customer journeys that significantly impact their experiences. These moments, whether major or minor, all contribute to the final verdict on the patient’s experience.
Identifying these experiences isn’t easy, and it involves a lot of research and data analysis to help you get the information you need. Determining the significant moments of truth is vital, and typically, these tend to be moments such as when a patient researches and contacts the provider for the first time, resolves a bill, or gets information regarding coverage and navigates care and referrals for more complex issues. The more negative an experience a patient has at these points, the lower their satisfaction will be.
Other truth identifiers, such as scheduling an appointment, having queries resolved, or paying a bill, still contribute, but they don’t hold the same weight. This doesn’t mean they need to be neglected; they’re just not as significant as other points. Identify these moments of truth within your organization to see how you can improve the patient experience and elevate what you do.
Use Insights to Make Improvements
It is crucial to collect and use patient feedback to gain insights into your operations and staff and patient satisfaction scores. This process not only helps you make necessary improvements but also makes your patients feel valued and integral to the improvement process. It’s a way of showing them that their opinions matter and can directly influence the quality of care they receive.
Look at the information you have gathered to find ‘low-hanging fruit’ —issues that can easily be addressed and resolved for a smoother patient experience. For instance, long wait times, unclear billing processes, or lack of communication can be considered low-hanging fruit. Then, work through the data you have to help you make necessary adjustments in different areas that will directly benefit what you do and the care received by those you serve.
The reality is that you need your patients to be honest. If you have any way to move forward and make improvements, be intentional about collecting feedback and using these insights more collectively to help you improve.
Tailor Your Services
Your services need to benefit the patients and the community you serve directly. While the basics should still be offered at a minimum, being able to reach out with patient-focused directives and initiatives can further serve your community and give people a shining light to gravitate toward the help they need.
It might be that you need to develop a substance abuse program or effective referral system to help patients if there is a substance abuse issue in your area, hone your care to proceed with more specific healthcare and support for minority groups who experience different care needs than white patients, you might find having specialist clinics and advice routes for particular illnesses or complaints works well. Even having information and offering support and guidance for people with different health conditions and diagnoses can be beneficial, not just leaving them to find it themselves. Directing patients of children with cerebral palsy to a decided expert or information such as this Cerebral Palsy Guide for additional help can be precisely what they need, as can hosting dedicated clinics for certain illnesses and support groups or bringing in specialists with in-depth knowledge and expertise in certain areas, i.e., diabetes. Identify what options will work for your patients and encourage them to use these services to offer more help and support.
Utilise Technology
There is a plethora of medical technology that can be used to streamline various aspects of medical care. From incorporating telemedicine services so people can still get an appointment even if they can’t come to the practice, using digital twins to explore pathology and enhance treatment options, using different AI systems of personalized healthcare, and electronic health records to provide up-to-date information on patients and keep all records up to date and automating booking and referrals and allowing parents full autonomy over their experiences with your care facility.
Flexible Staffing
While building a solid, robust team of professionals is the goal, if staffing is inflexible, you will likely run into issues down the line, which will impact the patient experience.
For example, fluctuating patient volumes and seasonal spikes can be tricky to accommodate if your scheduling is rigid and doesn’t allow for a smooth transition to busier times. For example, let’s say you are a primary care provider who has previously fallen short in scheduling and accommodating fluctuations around flu season or treating increased children’s injuries around school breaks due to your staff being unable to accommodate an influx of calls. You need to look at how you can increase flexibility ahead of time using data from previous years to adjust staffing levels and even operating hours to allow more people to get the care they need at certain times. While it’s not always as easy to build flexibility into a more rigid working environment, talking to your staff about how you can make changes that benefit their lifestyle and your parents can help you find some common ground and make life easier for everyone involved.
Resolutions can involve:
- Bringing in temporary cover.
- Extending opening hours.
- Partnering with other providers ensures continuous care when the other isn’t available.
Relying on data, analyzing feedback from staff and patients, and being proactive can help you to work towards more flexible staffing levels for improved patient care.
Improving the patient experience is a complex task for any provider. It involves getting to the core of the issues, identifying them, and putting fixes in place that benefit both the organization and the patient. While you can’t make the right improvements for everyone striving to do better, you can make adjustments, enhance the patient experience, and move in the right direction to improve overall patient experiences.
