Ways to improve your quality of patient care system
Regardless of what the business is, quality is a major thing of importance, which helps build a business and gears it ahead towards success. Quality has been prominently focused on by startups, established companies, entrepreneurs, and others. This has been seen as valid for a wide range of businesses across domains.
Quality products and services not only delight the customers, but also help build a reputation for a brand, and sets it ahead of its competitors and rivals that fail to come up with the established benchmarks of quality. This quality happens to be even more crucial when it comes to the industries like that of healthcare, where the patients' health and their lives are dependent.
Raising the quality of healthcare is the primary responsibility of all living in a society. The patients, who are at distress, needs to be helped out of it. They need to be properly cared for, and it is their quick recovery that should the most precious achievement of the healthcare system and the organizations that operate under the same.
What is the quality of patient care?
The quality of patient care refers to the degree to which the patients will receive the healthcare they desire. With initiatives like "health for all" and the drive for decent healthcare that will be at par with the desired standards and/or quality, the quality of patient care is of foremost importance both for the patients and the medical practices.
How does the quality of the patient care system matter?
The quality of the patient care system, which is definitely crucial for the patients, has also become more than important even for the medical practices.
With the rise of competition in the healthcare ecosystem, the patients stand surrounded with proficient medical practices and other healthcare units. Here, the only factor that influences the patients' decision is the quality of the care provided by the practices. It is the quality of patient access, patient services, and the quality of the overall treatment that makes up for the patient experience. The experience that the patients receive matters reflects in their present feedback and reviews also impacts their future decisions.
According to the latest statistical data, over 60% of the younger patients will likely switch their medical providers in want of better digital experience. The digital experience matters a lot when it comes to the quality of the patient care system. The access to the digital tools and software to better the patient care system is something that most of the medical practices are trying to achieve. This objective of the healthcare units is being fulfilled by the latest medical office software and systems that GrowPractice is bringing to the medical software.
There are many aspects of the quality of patient care extended to the patients, and all of them are crucial in determining the quality. Here are a few of the prominent points to present how the quality of the patient care stands crucial for the healthcare system, the patients, practices and others:
• Quality of the patient care system saves lives
• Adequate quality of healthcare improves efficiency
• Boosts the health of men, women and children
• Enhances credibility
• Helps practice managers and staff gain recognition
• Brings cost-effectiveness into play
• Helps in providing patient-first care
• Saves time for the medical staff, managers and administrators of practice
• Minimizes patient no-shows
• Dissolves security issues for the patients
• Helps avert serious conditions and handles emergencies
• Boosts the attraction of new patients and retains old patients
• Improves the sustainability of the healthcare industry
The measurable quality of patient care
The quality of the patient care in the healthcare ecosystems might seem to be a subjective term that can hardly be worked on by the providers. However, that is far from it. Now that we have progressed much in research and analytics, we have invented numerous strategies to define and improve the quality of the patient care system.
One of the commonly used metric the hels define the quality of care extended to the patients is via using patient feedback and reviews. These are crucial data of what the patients' feel about a particular medical practice based on the experience that they have received. The availability of such data was tough earlier. The collection of patient feedback and reviews is a challenge even now, but that can be less fo a bother with GrowPractice's unique set of medical office software, practice and patient management solution, which equips the medical practices with effective procedures of gathering the crucial patient feedback and reviews that actually matter.
Besides, there are 6 primary domains, which the US Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) has used to measure the quality of healthcare. These are:
• Safety
• Effectiveness
• Patient-centeredness
• Timeliness
• Efficiency
• Equitability
Upon the above-mentioned factors, it is imperative for the medical practices and healthcare units to measure the quality of patient care they provide in order to get themselves growing ahead of the competition. This growth can further be enhanced by implementing some easy-to-follow strategies that we have brought to you after extensive research.
Effective Ways to Enhance the Quality of the Patient Care System!
Millions of people die each year due to the lack of quality patient care system and practices, as per the survey by WHO. Most of these can be prevented with more knowledge and proper quality of medical care practices.
If you are wondering about the lack of quality in your medical practice and want to better the same, then here are some effective ways that you can follow to improve the quality of the patient care system at your practice:
Treat patients well
The patients rush to the nearest medical care facility tensed, torn by their illness, confused and burdened by numerous thoughts. Here, the first thing that the practices need to do is to offer the patients empathy, respect, acknowledge their condition and look for what best they can do. Treating the patients well should be in both sense, via offering proper medical care and by extending good and courteous behaviour.
Make healthcare easily accessible and effective
Healthcare is the need for everyone and this means that the healthcare facilities shall be open to all regardless of many of the existent constrains. The medical practices of today need to build a reach and reputation that people all over the state and beyond understands and acknowledges their presence. Building a robust digital presence is important in creating a dominant presence today for the practices. Besides, the medical practices should also offer simple and online patient appointment scheduling facilities so that the patients from far away can also book their appointments without hassles.
Whether it is the easy online booking of patient appointments or the hassle free patient check-ins and intakes, GrowPractice eases the way for the practices today, thereby lifting the overall quality of healthcare, improving patient access and patient services.
Improve Diagnosis, prescription and the use of medicines
Surveys reflect that over 4 in 10 patients are harmed in primary and outpatient healthcare. Here, around 80% of such harm is preventable, says reports. The errors related to diagnosis, prescription and the use of medicines are considered as some of the most detrimental mistakes that needs to be prevented to ensure quality patient care system.
Engage with the patients thoroughly
Over 62% of the patients upvoted good communication and continuous engagement when it comes to the overall experience of the patients. Patient engagement should be the priority of the practices today. Proper engagement with the patients not only help them feel valued and make optimum use of their time and that of the medical staff, but also aid the medical practices by helping them gain insights into the patients' troubles and ensuring they fix them effortlessly.
Build a digital healthcare system
In a survey, over half of the responding patients stated that a bad digital experience can even ruin their entire experience with the provider. Furthermore, it has also been revealed that more than 39% of the patients are of the opinion that a good digital experience increase their chances of staying with the same provider. Over 75% of the patients stated that they have used and believe in using secure online methods to access medical histories and share information with their providers. The patient portals, which are on the rise, are also hugely dependent on the digital access of the practices and over 78% of the patients have used patient portals.
Address the patients' physical needs
The patients who are admitted, almost always have a dominant physical condition bothering them and numerous other physical needs or requirements that they might expect out of their provider, which the later should address in the best possible way. This would help in raising the quality of the patient care provided.
Provide mental support to the patients
Along with addressing the physical needs of the patients, the medical staff shoud also largely focus on the patients' mental condition and provide support to them in all possible ways. This will help strengthen the patients and infuse a sense of confidence and positivity towards their providers. This will ultimately lead to improving the quality of the patient care.
Extend effective patient reminders
Over 50% of the patients, irrespective of their age group prefer digital reminders over the usual phone reminders. Besides, reports state that over 55% of the patients today expects their doctors to send automated text, voice, or email reminders to ask them to schedule appointments or take medications. Reminders play a crucial role in helping the patients not miss their important appointments, tests and more, thereby helping them receive quality healthcare.
Reduce the patient wait times and no-shows
More than 80% of the patients regard that the wait times they see play a crucial role in forming the overall experience at a practice. These wait times can be lessened though with the use of medical office solutions that are brought by reputed medical office software solution providers like GrowPractice.
Patient no-shows cost the US healthcare system somewhere close to $150 bn a year, reveals surveys. All of these money could be easily spent on bettering the patients' health. Therefore, it is evident that patient wait times and no-shows should be minimized.
Reducing the patient wait times and mitigating the longstanding problem of no-shows can be achieved if you reach out to trusted medical office, patient and practice management solution providers. GrowPractice is one of such solution providers that brings a wide range of patient and practice-oriented software systems to enhance the overall healthcare system.
Some of the prominent ways in which GrowPractice is bettering the patient care system are:
• By providing secure and HIPAA-compliant medical office solutions
• Extending flexible payment methods
• Offering simple and instant payment facilities
• Providing easy, online patient appointments, check-ins and intakes
• Enhancing the patient engagement
• Streamining the patient journeys
• Reducing patient wait times and no-shows
• Improving accuracy
• Increasing transparency
• Offering improved patient survey and feedback facilities
