Today, if we talk about a healthcare organization’s performance, then one of the most important indicators will be patient satisfaction.
Did patients find the treatment effective? Did they receive all the information related to their health? Did they find the hospital staff helpful? Where were they able to get information regarding how to use their medical insurance for co-pay?
These are a few of the questions getting answers to which would contribute to the patient experience, which, in turn, would influence patient satisfaction. But it is important to know that patient satisfaction is subjective. What healthcare organizations need is a “Patient Feedback System” to be able to align patient experience with expectations.
Importance of Patient’s Experience
Trust & Loyalty of Patients
In today’s competitive healthcare environment, there are numerous options for patients. One bad experience and your patients will move on to another healthcare provider because they want nothing but the best.
So, therefore, to keep hold of such patients, you must be able to establish trust and loyalty too. And the only way you can do so is by offering excellent patient experience.
A satisfied patient is more likely to continue to take health care services from your healthcare organization rather than searching for another facility.
Attracting New Patients
Generally, in healthcare industries, word-of-mouth marketing goes a long way. It is said to be the best form of marketing that gives new patients the confidence that they are being taken care of at a good healthcare facility, and that they are in the right hands.
And to ensure that your patients speak very positively about your healthcare brand, it is important that you ensure patient satisfaction.
Patients who have a positive experience with your healthcare brand will recommend it to others and will give positive reviews online, which in turn, would attract more patients.
Here is how you can provide excellent patient experiences to attract new patients:
- You must make sure patients add positive reviews to your website.
- Promote reviews and testimonial videos on various social media platforms.
- Start writing blogs and feature recovery stories of patients.
Better Clinical Outcomes
As per 77.8% of studies, good patient experience was linked with medical effectiveness. Moreover, there are few other studies that demonstrate that a better patient experience can provide a lower rate of readmission for the same problem.
And though the readmission and wellness scenarios for different medical problems may vary, it is believed that better experiences and relationships with healthcare professionals, doctors, and other medical staff members can give better clinical outcomes.
For example, the health and recovery of diabetic patients are dependent on their self-care and food-eating habits. And positive interactions with healthcare providers can encourage them to stick to medical advice and adopt a healthy lifestyle.
Improved Patient Retention
There is no alternative you would find with regards to keeping hold of your patients. Patients will surely choose your healthcare organization if you continue to improve patient satisfaction through flawless and positive experiences.
Here let’s look at how a positive experience strategy can help:
Saving Money on Patient Acquisition: Acquiring new patients is much more expensive than keeping hold of the existing ones. Although you may attract new patients through insurance contracts or by advertising and then establish patient and payment records, this will represent a portion of the investment you make in new patients.
You can avoid such unnecessary costs and save more money by maintaining a consistent revenue inflow if you are able to successfully reduce patient churn.
Developing Loyalty in Patients: Obtaining patients’ trust is the best thing you can do for your healthcare business. This is because if your patients are loyal, they will not only prefer your healthcare facility but will also recommend the same to their friends and family members.
Financial Benefit
Poor patient experience can directly lead to the loss of patients. And in the United States, the loss of patients due to unsatisfactory experiences attributes to a loss of over $200,000 in a healthcare practice’s lifetime.
According to a Press Ganey study, hospitals with 90% patient satisfaction receive an additional one-third of the existing patient base every year. This means you can expect more revenue simply by delivering quality experiences, something that requires more investments in marketing.
Additionally, 32% of people say they visit a healthcare facility simply by checking reviews. This clearly indicates how a positive patient experience can provide more business from new patients.
Importance of Patient Feedback System
A patient feedback system will help hospitals, or any other healthcare organization improve the patient experience. However, globally there are many hospitals and healthcare centers that still use conventional feedback systems. Sadly, all such types of feedback systems fail to provide the desired number of patient responses and actionable insights.
Post Covid-19, people have embraced digitization much more than earlier. And thus today, hospitals are taking advantage of this behavioral shift by setting patient feedback software to listen to the voice of patients.
Apart from this, patient feedback software improves hospitals’ ability to collect and analyze patient feedback. Now let’s look at how a digital feedback system adds value to hospitals.
Advantages of Patient Feedback System
Measure & Track Patient Experience Metrics
A patient feedback app helps hospitals and other healthcare facilities to measure and track important patient experience metrics. Using these metrics hospitals can recognize where the service stands out and where it falls short of patients’ expectations.
Improves Quality Care
With a digital feedback system, hospitals and other healthcare facilities can understand patients’ preferences through actionable data. Further, it will also help them identify those departments that are falling short of patient expectations.
Increase Patient Retention
Metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) help hospitals and other healthcare facilities measure patient satisfaction levels and patient loyalty.
A digital patient feedback system can help hospitals stay updated on these metrics. Therefore, they can utilize these measurements to improve patient retention.
Perform Analysis of Negative Feedback
With a digital feedback system, hospitals and other healthcare service providers will be able to perform root cause analysis on negative feedback. Using such a feedback system, they can monitor complaints raised by patients, until they are not resolved.
Further, an advanced digital feedback system will also inform patients of issue resolution. Doing this will help hospitals boost patient loyalty and build a positive reputation.
Generate Reports in Detail
With a digital patient feedback system, hospitals and other healthcare facilities can easily generate detailed reports to check the ratings of all the services that they provide.
By analyzing this raw data, hospitals will be able to track performance efficiency. Ultimately, this will help them enhance their patient satisfaction.
Increases Active Participation of Patients
Today, with a digital feedback system, patients no longer need to manually fill out forms to communicate their concerns. Also, hospitals will be able to connect with patients through different communication modes.
A well-designed digital feedback system will provide convenience to patients. Moreover, it will encourage active participation in a patient satisfaction survey.
Improves & Sets New Standards in Patient Experience
With a digital patient feedback system, hospitals and other medical care facilities can systematically access patient care quality. This will help them to continuously improve and set new standards for patient experience.
Improves Staff Satisfaction
With a digital feedback system, the intervention of staff is eliminated in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Hence, this would help hospital staff to manage their time in a better way and focus more on the care services.
Additionally, a digital feedback system would increase staff satisfaction.
