Patient Experience Trends in 2022
Patients and practices are almost intertwined, mutually dependent. Patients certainly rush to the practices to get immediate care and doctor's consultancy, tests, and other services but it is also important to note that it is revenues from the patients that help practices survive. This is why the healthcare unites, hospitals and practices need to be more concerned about their patients and help them get the utmost care and comfort when at practice.
Patient experience is one of the most important things that practices should consider. The experience that patients derive from interacting with a medical practice including their communication via emails, phones, and face-to-face, and the care they receive, can be primarily summed up as patient experience.
The experience that the patients form depends on numerous other factors like the look of the practice, care from the health plans, the physicians, doctors, nurses, and other hospital/practice staff, wait time experience and billing experience, to name a few. Along with these, another crucial factor that heavily influences the patient experience is the medical equipment or software that is used in medical practice.
Here, most often it is discovered that the practices are either using dated equipment and methods in their medical offices or still trying to manage things manually. This is what the practices seriously need to revamp in order to increase patient satisfaction.
Patient Experience and Patient Satisfaction
Patient experience and patient satisfaction sound almost the same word with similar meanings and most importantly, they are also used almost interchangeably on most occasions. However, it is important to note that they are completely different words just as their spellings are different from each other.
Patient experience is the experience that a patient derives when he/she interacts with a practice or visits one, whereas patient satisfaction is the final result of the patient's experiences. Patient satisfaction is the ultimate say of the patients about whether the practice has fulfilled his/her expectations.
For example, if a practice has two patients to take care of and both of them receive adequate care, the patient satisfaction ratings will still differ from one patient to the other. Thus, patient satisfaction purely depends on how a patient has been visualized the practice or expected it to be. Patient satisfaction is usually measured in the form of ratings, in percentage.
Patient Experience Week 2022
Patient experiences play a crucial role not only in determining the revenues of practice but also goes further to improving patient satisfaction ratings. This is why patient experiences are among the first things that a practice considers, especially when the practice revenues are concerned.
Patient experience is not only observed singularly by hospitals, practices, clinics, and healthcare units but is also observed by the medical industry at large. Yes, patient experience week is famously observed all around the world to boost awareness about the experience of the patients and why it should be bettered.
Hosted by The Beryl Institute, patient experience week is celebrated by the doctors, nurses, medical office staff, and other caregivers who are involved in shaping up the patient experiences. The patient experience is observed during the last week of April of a year by anyone with or without any association with a hospital, clinics, or practice. The patient experience week is upcoming on April 26, which will be continuing till April 30, 2022.
Patient experiences are really important for the practices. In fact, the practices and other healthcare service providers should essentially look forward to improving patient experiences, which would thereby lead to a growth in the patient satisfaction ratings.
Why Practices are looking forward to improving patient experience and patient satisfaction?
Practices, clinics, and other medical care providers are primarily built to take care of the patients and adequate care for the patients automatically results in boosting the patient experience and increasing the patient satisfaction ratings.
Enhancing patient satisfaction in healthcare has been the main motto of the healthcare industry in general and not just of the healthcare centers since times immemorial. However, the growing drive for building an impressive patient experience has started to influence the practices recently and has been more prominent than ever. This increasing focus on patient experiences is rewarding indeed, to say the least.
Here are some of the reasons why the practices of today are trying to boost their patient experience:
Building trust is essential for the survival of a business or a company and it is more so when it comes to the healthcare industry. It is thus, important for a healthcare unit, clinic or practice to gain a considerable amount of credibility to serve more patients and in a better way.
Transparency in billing and charges is an important factor influencing the credibility of medical practice. Research says that around '65% of patients consider the transparency of the cost of healthcare services as something critical or very important to their overall satisfaction'.
Therefore, a practice needs to be clear and confident about what they charge and implement advanced medical billing software to make it easier and error-free. However, when choosing the medical office software, a trusted software solution from GrowPractice that are exclusively designed for private medical offices/practices and urgent care serve the purpose best.
Appointing able doctors and nurses and how a practice provides the ultimate care for the patients are some other essential factors that are central to building the credibility of practice, thereby improving the patient experience. The growing credibility of a clinic/practice helps it gain more patients by referral and multiply its revenues.
One major thing that a practice cannot overlook is attracting new patients. New patients bring in new possibilities for practices and this is what they simply cannot neglect. Proper marketing is important for practice and it is digital marketing that they should focus on to reduce expenses and boost leads.
Attracting new patients also depends on how the practices onboard their patients via online appointments and medical office check-ins. According to recent statistical data, it has been seen that around 68% of patients are more likely to choose practices that extend the facilities of booking, changing, or canceling appointments online.
This is why GrowPractice brings the latest book patient appointments online. Some other factors upon which the patient experience depends are wait times, patient workflow, followups, staff behavior, and more.
Retention of the old patients is almost as important for the practices as it is for them to attract new patients. Patient retention not only helps practices gain credibility but also helps them see constant revenues coming from the patient base that is loyal to the practice.
Retaining old patients depends on a series of factors that practices need to consider including the healthcare they provide, the communication with them, total costs, payments and billings, doctors, nurses, tests and facilities, wait times, and more. Around 43% of patients have claimed that the patient wait time is the most frustrating part when they are visiting practice to see a doctor.
This is where GrowPractice proves to be a boon with its paperless transactions, advanced billing software, and more than 65 EHR/PM software that they bring for the ease of patient management, leading to a major boost in the practice revenues.
Whenever a patient is happy and a business or a company learns the same, then that is obviously a great boost to the overall morale. The same is true for the practices. It is when the patient experience is positive, and the patients are satisfied that the practices get a renewed boost of their morale.
Practices revenues are almost directly related to the positive patient experience. Now, if a practice is extending great healthcare and is influencing the patients' experiences, then that will go a long way to boost the revenues of the practice as well.
Therefore, it is clear that the patients' experiences are instrumental to helping a practice grow in terms of their care and revenue. Measuring the patient experience is something the practices can hardly avoid if they want to grow their revenues. But how can you measure patient experiences?
Now, if you are confused about measuring patients' experiences, then that won't be a problem in the age we are living in today. Though earlier the patient experiences could only be assumed by their behavior and later recognized by their actions, now it is the patient satisfaction surveys and online reviews that do the majority of the work for the practices.
Do patient satisfaction surveys in healthcare improve practice revenues?
Yes, patient surveys have a huge contribution to improving the revenues of the clinics and practices. Patient satisfaction surveys in healthcare and online reviews have been helping practices ever since they came into being. These surveys can be conducted in a variety of methods and all of them help practices gain an insight into the patient experiences, monitoring which the practices can improve the overall quality of their services.
Around 93% of the customers today read online reviews before they buy a product. This percentage is increasing each day with the drive for the digital. The healthcare industry is one such sector where the importance of patient satisfaction surveys is growing each day. According to the recent records, around 71% of patients have been found 'using online reviews as a way to evaluate and select a new healthcare provider.'
Patient satisfaction surveys in healthcare are really important for the practices to go by. This is because of the numerous benefits it offers to the practices and clinics, most of which tend to influence the practice revenues. One of the major benefits of improving patient satisfaction is that it also helps the practices lift their revenues. It has been discovered that a single point increase in the patient rating of practice leads to a 0.2% increase in the net operating profit margin for the same. Thus, monitoring and increasing the patient experience certainly helps the practice witness a boost in terms of its revenues.
Monitoring patient experience and improving patient satisfaction are something that practice simply cannot take their attention off of. However, patient experience trends never remain the same. They are ever-changing in the world of the healthcare industry, where new trends are replacing the older ones each day. Now that the new year is upcoming, letâs have a look at all the new patient experience trends in 2022 that will influence patients, practices, and other individuals.
Here's a look at the Prominent Patient Experience Trends in 2022:
Patients are being more inclined to book appointments online
Booking online patient appointments are becoming more popular than ever. In the age of the new normal with the pandemic still hovering above us, most of the patients do not want to step into the practices and book their appointments. The latest data reveals that around 64% of the patients are willing to schedule their appointments online.
This will far more efficient with GrowPractice's fast and easy-to-use patient appointment schedulers that will not only reduce no-shows but will also help them multiply revenues. Besides, with GrowPractice software, practices will now be able to book appointments around the clock because nearly 60% of the practices lose some of their revenues due to the lack of the same.
They are preferring practices with online portals for check-ins
Patient check-ins happens to be another major concern for the practices as soon they are done with the initial appointments. Opting for the cutting-edge online software for patient online check-ins from GrowPractice will surely reduce the patient hassles to half along with reducing 75% of the practice staff time on the phone, which has saved more than 500 hours annually per provider.
Online patient satisfaction surveys and reviews are dominating the industry
Patient satisfaction surveys have been much influencing the patient experience and are providing a lot of insights to the practice to help them improve the quality of their healthcare service. GrowPractice is also enabled with impactful methods that will help practices satisfactorily collect the patient satisfaction surveys; thereby helping them retain the old patients and attract new ones! The innovative medical practice software and systems from GrowPractice have already helped practices lessen their negative online reviews by as much as 85%.
Patients are looking for more digital security
Digital security is what the patients need today in the wide market of the digital, which is also known for its spurious ways. However, choosing GrowPractice as the medical office software provider will provide the practices with layered data encryption, HIPAA compliance, and multi-level security. This will let the practices have all the security they want to boast of!
Changing and cancellations of appointments online are the trend
Patients of now (more than 68%) are more inclined to choose medical service providers that extend the facilities of booking, changing, and canceling appointments online. GrowPractice is one of the major providers of medical office software that come with patient appointment software, which are designed to make easy booking, rescheduling, and cancellation of appointments possible.
Follow-up emails and text messages are proving highly useful
Emails and text messages are hugely embraced by patients today. It has been seen that as much as 70% of the patients opt for the practices that send emails or text messages. GrowPractice's two-way texting methods that are HIPAA-compliant and help practices get 24*7 alerts will doubly help the practice owners and managers.
Automated text messages and online reminders are rapidly coming in
The time of automatic text messages and online reminders have already set in with the call for the digital and now the trends for the same are just rising. Over 57% of the patients today expect to get automated text, voice, or email reminders from the practices. Online text messages and reminders are more than easy to use with the automated systems from GrowPractice, which lets practice communication easily and reduces no-shows heavily.
Wait time is becoming a strict no-no
Wait time is the most frustrating part for more than 43% of the surveyed patients while they are visiting doctors. However, this wait time can certainly be shortened enough to help the practices impress the patients. Paperless forms, online patient intakes, and the smart EHR software that GrowPractice brings to the practices will help them cut off the depressing wait times for the patients thereby improving the practice revenues.
Transparency is becoming crucial in healthcare
Research reveals that around 65% of the patients demand transparency when it comes to the cost of healthcare services. Transparency in terms of costs, billing, and other aspects of patients' check-ups is really crucial for the practices to maintain. The healthcare industry is growing and not all players are reliable. Therefore, a practice needs to help the patients have a clear idea of all the services they can expect and what they have to pay against them.
GrowPractice is bringing the best possible medical office software, patient management and practice management software and systems that are not only helping a significant number of practices boost their revenues but to grow their service. So, check them out now without further delay!
