Are you looking for different ways to improve the patient experience within your practice? Do you have a hospital that’s looking to make the guests feel more comfortable?
If so, then it’s important to learn how to improve the patient experience. Doing so can lead more clients to your hospital or practice.
People want to be treated with the utmost care and respect, if you can offer those two things, your practice will be highly regarded.
See below for several tips that you can implement towards improving patient experience and optimizing a client-first mindset throughout your entire hospital or clinic staff.
1. Establish Your Brand Online
These days, the online marketing space dictates everything. People are choosing their hospitals and clinics the same way they choose their restaurant: a local Google search.
For that reason alone, you must push your online brand on the rest of the world. However, your online presence doesn’t just get you in the face of the customer, it goes a long way towards establishing your brand.
If you’re looking to establish a client-first mentality for your brand, it all starts with implementing that on your website.
Place photos and detailed bios of your entire staff offer an online portal for your customers, offer a place for them to schedule appointments, etc. The more convenient your site, the more patient-friendly your brand will be perceived in their eyes.
2. Use an AI Medical Scribe
The technology of modern medicine has advanced so much in only the past few years.
Using that technology in your practice can help your customers get in and out of the door faster, leading to a better experience. Such is the use of implementing and using an AI medical scribe in your practice.
Think of it as a personal assistant to the doctor. It will document all essential information from the patient’s visit and negate the need for doctors to take notes while meeting with their patients.
The notes that the medical scribe produces can be viewed by the doctor, placed on the patient’s portal account on your website, and so on. It’s highly efficient, and your patients will approve!
3. Integrate Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Whether they have a good or bad experience at your practice, your clients want to feel as if their voice is being heard. They want to help improve your practice so that they can continue to go back and have an improved experience each time.
One of the best ways to gather their input is through a patient satisfaction survey that’s distributed after each visit. You can let the patient know that they’ll be emailed an online survey that they can fill out.
These surveys can go a long way towards improving your efficiency. It can help with things such as site user experiences, reducing wait room times, streamlining your scheduling, improving patient-doctor experiences, and so on.
4. Prioritize Communication
It’s the oldest trick in the healthcare handbook, but it bears repeating: your company has to prioritize communication with your patients.
When it comes to their health, patients tend to assume the worst. If they don’t hear back from your office about a test result after a certain amount of days, they fear that something is wrong. Even if that’s not the case, it can lead to a horrible experience.
Communication is the most important thing between you and your customers. Answer your phone with positivity, keep all patients in the loop on test results, direct the patient to the professional in your company that can best answer their question.
To improve your online communication, you’ll want to do things like adding a live chat feature on your site, offering multiple forms of contact on your site, and so on.
To improve in-house communication, be sure to help your staff prioritize things like looking the patient in their eyes, keep conversation friendly and engaging, and always greet patients with a smile.
5. Increase Availability
No, this isn’t referring to extending your in-office hours. Quite the opposite. In this day in age, your customers want their answers faster than ever. They don’t want to go into your office for answers unless they have to.
Thanks to modern technology, you can increase the availability of your hospital or clinic without having to schedule more appointments.
You can place a frequently asked questions page on your website. You could add a blog on your company’s site that’s geared towards your ideal patient’s biggest pain points.
You might also consider offering a doctor on-demand service which allows patients to speak with knowledgeable doctors on their symptoms. The appointments are done within minutes and can be performed between in-office appointments as well.
As previously mentioned, you might also consider adding a live chat feature to your website. You could also consider keeping one staff member on-call to perform mobile visits to your registered clientele.
Patients tend to reward hospitals and clinics that are more forward-thinking. The more innovative you get with things like communication and in-appointment features, the happier they’ll be with your services.
Improve the Patient Experience of Your Clientele Today
Now that you’ve seen several ways to improve the patient experience among your clientele, it’s time for you to implement them all.
Start by thinking about what aspects of your practice that your patients would point to as your biggest weaknesses. Turn those weaknesses into a strength with the right technology or business strategy.
Be sure to browse our website for more articles on the doctor-patient relationship, as well as many other helpful topics you should consider!
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