Ways to Measure Patient Satisfaction

Though the sight of the doctors, nurses, receptionists, and other healthcare workers are some of the most prominent sights in any healthcare unit or practice, it is always the patients that they are working for.

Practices aim to extend the best care for the patients. Yes, simply because the latter is the only reason that the practices stand for. Patients are central to the clinics, practices, and healthcare facilities. Therefore, it is evident that they need to understand what the patients want and how to keep them satisfied on each of their visits.

A patient usually wants to book their appointments without hassles, because primarily, the visits of the patients are of urgency. It is due to some diseases/ailments that spurs them to land at a hospital or healthcare clinic, which needs to be taken care of. Then, comes the check-in, followed by the engagement, which eventually leads to the doctor visit and finally the impression of the doctor, who prescribes any further actions that they need to take. All of these steps are crucial in a patient's first visit or any successive visits for that matter. A practice should thus be concerned about each of these steps where they interact with the patients in order to measure their experience and better them.

What are the factors that influence the patient experience in healthcare?

As the patients occupy a central part in the healthcare industry, it is always a responsibility for the healthcare units including hospitals, clinics, and healthcare practices, to ensure healthcare, which leaves a positive patient experience.

Patient satisfaction is a crucial parameter that should always be the first priority of the healthcare system. It is a common indicator that determines the quality of healthcare followed in a clinic/practice.

Research shows that over 65% of patients claim that the transparency of the cost of healthcare services is a crucial parameter that the practices need to consider to improve the overall satisfaction of the patients.

Yes, there can be numerous such factors that directly influence patient satisfaction. Now, if you are wondering what they are, then it feels great to inform you that we have researched on that matter and have decided to put forth a handful of the most important factors on which the patient experience in healthcare directly relies!

Here's diving into some of the most crucial points that the practices need to revise, which would lead to a growth in the rate of the positive patient experiences that they witness:

First impressions - As goes the common adage, 'the first impression is the last impression, you should always be alert and informed that this proverb even holds true in the medical industry, as it is relevant in any other industry. The booking of patient appointments has always become an area that is surrounded by frets. This is where online patient appointments are bringing in a change for the good. Online patient bookings have dramatically improved patient experiences, thereby turning their first impression to be impressive.

Transparency of the costs - The healthcare industry is marked by the care it provides at a considerable cost. However, the cost is often seen rising and with no proper break-up that can justify the same. This gives rise to numerous confusions and chaos centering on the bills and the costs involved in the services, which severely affects the patient experience. Besides, many practices also resort to unjust ways to charge their customers. To avoid this, patient practices need to inform the patients about their charges and other costs upfront and keep their charges known and transparent.

Billing - The billing process is one such process that needs to recheck all the services that a patient opted for and ensure that the charges are all justified. This is why it is the billing process that involves a lot of time and effort for practice. Besides, the billing is prone to numerous errors. Research says that around 41% of patients usually do have doubts about whether the billed amount is correct and are of the opinion that it is perhaps wrong. However, as the industry is seeing advancements in terms of the new-age software and the latest technologies that it is incorporating for billing each day, patient satisfaction is being widely influenced and significantly improved with them.

Patient engagement - A patient, as soon as he/she drops in the nearby hospital or practice, needs to be actively cared for. However, most often we see that the patients are subjected to mismanagement, longer wait times, and more, which harms the patient experience in general.

Doctor visit - The patient appointments ultimately culminate to doctor visits. Here, experienced doctors who are attentive to and caring for the patients serve best, however, many practices overlook the physicians they house and their expertise.

Diagnosis - A physician's diagnosis matters much when it comes to practice. It is what the doctor diagnoses that determines the next course of action for the patients. Therefore, it is important for the practice to reevaluate the physicians' performance. Here, the patient's feedback really comes in handy.

Tests and medical facilities - Medical care units and practices need to cope with the demands of the healthcare industry and adopt the latest medical office software, advanced patient management tools and upgrade their medical facilities for the overall good. In many cases, advanced medical facilities are what is gravely missing!

Further communication/follow-up - As soon as the patient completes the doctor visit, he/she should either be doing tests or taking medications and wait till the next appointment. Here, the practices need to update the patients upfront of the next actions they need to take and keep them informed about the next visit or the tests they need to go through via updated communication systems and timely reminders.

Now that you are informed about some of the major points that influence a patient's experience you are probably wondering that among these many factors it is tough to judge what a particular patient doesn't like in a practice. Yes, narrowing down to a particular reason for a patient's satisfaction is tough indeed but not as hard as you think with the help of modern methods.

Easy Ways for Measuring and Improving Patient Experience and Satisfaction!

Gauging the patients' satisfaction sounds like a mammoth task but you won't be much disappointed if you have your practice equipped with the modern ways of consistent patient feedback.

The patients' tests and the records are always secretive but practice can certainly take huge insights from the experience of the patients. This can easily be done with the help of insightful patient feedbacks via:

Telephone surveys - Practices and healthcare units can always resort to telephonic surveys to understand what their patient thinks about the care they received. These surveys can be scheduled at any convenient time for the patients to answer them. Odd/erratic times need to be prohibited for telephone surveys.

Feedback forms - Feedback forms are another useful option that practice can go for in order to measure patient satisfaction scores on the basis of which the practices can improve their software and systems.

Mail surveys - The surveys or feedback of the patients can also be taken with the help of emails that the practices might drop in their mailboxes. These mail surveys are convenient, detailed, and effective. However, they need to mail the customers from a secured mail because around 69% of the patients claim that they are more inclined to choose medical providers that communicate with them through secure emails. Mailing surveys are great because the patient can easily attend them at their leisure and respond attentively.

SMS feedbacks - Practices, hospitals, and healthcare facilities can also opt for going by the SMS feedback that they receive from their patients. In this method, the patients will receive an SMS each on their mobile phones where they can easily rate the service received at the particular practice.

Online surveys - Online surveys are another useful addition when it comes to measuring patient experience surveys. If a practice adopts the method of online surveys, then it chooses the online method to obtain insightful surveys from the patients.

These are undoubtedly some of the most effective methods that a practice can use to know the patient experience in healthcare. However, if you are confused about the method you need to go for, then you can certainly reach out to GrowPractice to significantly improve patient satisfaction scores. GrowPractice, with the help of innovative patient satisfaction questionnaires and other state-of-the-art methods, will ensure that your practice is informed about its scope of improvements and improve its medical office effectively

How Patient Satisfaction Surveys in Healthcare Improve the Patient Experience!

Patient satisfaction surveys are crucial in letting the practice know of any existing wrongs and steer it towards the right things that it needs to adopt. These surveys and feedback have been growing in numbers and innovations in terms of the methods of approaching the patients and the questions asked to them.

Yes, patient satisfaction questionnaires have a great hand in improving the patient experiences because it is the questions asked to the patients, which determine their answers. Therefore, a practice must choose a set of relevant Yes/No questions that it needs to extend to its patients in the form of surveys in order to measure patient satisfaction and improve the patient experience.

Here's taking a look at how these surveys help in improving the patient experience directly:

The patient surveys help in bringing all the good aspects of the practices to help nurture them well.

They also bring all the red alerts for the practice that it can resort to improve immediately.

These surveys highlight different aspects of the practice and how the patients feel about them, which helps the practice review all of its services.

Opting for a convenient survey like an email survey, SMS surveys, online surveys, or sometimes feedback forms would not be painful or annoying for the patients.

Resorting to patient surveys helps add trust to the practice.

Following up on behalf of the practice with regards to negative feedback by the patients is something that boosts the patients' connection with the practice, thereby providing a great boost to patient satisfaction

Ramp Up Patient Satisfaction Scores with GrowPractice!

GrowPractice is a premier medical office software provider, which helps practices get the ultimate boost in terms of patient satisfaction.

Around 60% of the consumers claim that negative reviews are something that strongly repels them from a particular business, according to recent discoveries. Therefore, you need to take care of negative reviews and bring in the positivity that your practice would be known for. Here is where GrowPractice comes to play. The leading medical office software provider extends new and innovative ways to obtain patient satisfaction surveys and online reviews. This will not only build a relationship of trust between a patient and the practice but also helps the practice:

Improve patient retention

Reduce losses

Boost revenues

Make useful changes in their management for good

Cut costs

Bring in affordable technological tools and software ways

Attract new patients

Provide effective service

Along with all these GrowPractice is also known for its HIPAA-compliant, secure, two-way texting to engage the patients all along their journey. Healthcare brands and businesses using the medical office tools and software from GrowPractice have already seen around a 65% increase in positive online reviews and have reduced their negative online reviews by as much as 85%. So, what are you waiting for?