In the post-pandemic world, providing exemplary patient care experiences, support, and treatment has become one of the most critical priorities for everyone involved in the healthcare industry. The standard of care for patients and their well-being, as well as the healthcare industry’s ability to reinvent itself, are going to be a decade-long discussion going forward.
The pandemic has taken a toll on both patients and healthcare workers, both physically and emotionally. Everyone must understand the value of improving the experiences for both sides to have a sustainable ecosystem going into the future.
For healthcare providers specifically, it starts with the patients and ends with patients. This article will provide eight patient experience tips to improve your healthcare service.
Source: RingCentral UK
Having information readily available to every potential or existing patient is a good way to reinvent the patient experience. Nowadays, we’re wired to search and study information online before we commit to anything.
The healthcare industry still has a long way to go to transform itself digitally. One of the things that can be done, and which will affect building for the long term, is having a fully functional and informational website. There are a few things that even a community clinic can do to improve on the information front:
A social media fan page, such as on Facebook, is easy to maintain and for staff to update any type of information. Updating your Google Business Profile is another way to make sure that potential patients can find you, with reviews, business hours, and more.
As many countries and regions around the world are still not fully recovered from the pandemic—and we’re likely to permanently transform how things are run going forward—having the ability to offer telehealth services is crucial for both service providers and patients.
For anyone who’s looking to improve their existing remote service infrastructure or get started on building one, remote appointments are a must-have. Here are some benefits that can help you get started:
The progress to make the shift was fast-tracked as early as April 2020 for the U.K. According to the Royal College of General Practitioners, 71% of routine consultations were delivered remotely, which was 25% more when compared to the same period the previous year.
The ease of use for staff and added security are becoming more obvious as many practitioners use remote technologies.
Telemedicine has been around for a long time, but it’s not until recently that it’s been brought to the centre of attention. You can learn more about telemedicine by reading the Ultimate Guide to Online Telemedicine Courses.
Waiting time is one of the reasons that the general public sees visiting a doctor’s office or a hospital as a chore. Improving this aspect of the process is going to be beneficial to both healthcare service providers and patients.
For the clinics and hospitals, minimising waiting time can drastically improve the on-site experience for patients, increase satisfaction, and make everything run much more smoothly. For patients, the benefit is obvious—you no longer need to sacrifice extra hours just for waiting. It’s a win-win situation.
Here are some tips to help you get started:
Nowadays, there are a lot of medical-specific solution providers who can offer a wide variety of medical-related services, one of which being Kiosk Lockdown software, which ensures that your tablets running any on-site service can stay that way without the settings being tampered with by users.
If an online check-in service is offered, this means that patients won’t need to leave the house until it’s close to their time. People who check in on-site can go elsewhere to run errands and make better use of their time.
Things like playing soothing music in the background to relax patients, TV with medical or entertainment related content (cooking and travel shows are both great for relaxing the patients), indoor plants, or having a wide variety of books and magazines can all help improve the waiting experience.
Another great way to improve patient experience is to utilise social media to communicate with your patients. Both running a social media page and writing blog articles can require a certain level of resources, as it needs to be consistent in quality and quantity. Still, these are great ways to engage your patients organically:
Imagine you receive real-life tips on improving well being and health every week from your clinic. You will develop more trust and a long-lasting healthy relationship with your medical consultants.
As you start to gain traction with patients in this way, you can also explore other channels, such as sending newsletters, announcements, or updates in the form of emails to reach more of your audience. The better the delivery rate you have by consistently improving the experience, the more people can receive the knowledge and information meant to help them.
Not only can your patients get valuable information from you, but you can also leverage social media to promote and advocate for the services that you provide.
Mobile technologies not only pack everything you need into one device, but more importantly, they make you “mobile.” Many customer-facing industries, such as retail, hospitality, and banking, already use mobile technologies and devices to up their customer satisfaction game.
In 2019, around 1.23 billion US dollars had been invested in mobile health applications worldwide, making it the third most funded digital health category. The healthcare industry is one that mainly relies on human-to-human interaction, and can further take advantage of mobile health to improve its healthcare service:
Source: Statista
Having all the information at hand can also improve patient-to-physician communication, reduce time spent on pulling out reports from file cabinets, make better-informed decisions, and improve the overall interaction between two parties.
On-site medical staff can take mobile devices with them as they move around so that patients can get a personalised service, and the otherwise time-consuming process can now be simplified digitally.
Devices break down and services experience downtime, which is when the IT team needs to have solutions like mobile device management and remote control. That way, they can monitor and troubleshoot any device issues right away. Having the medical services and infrastructure running without any issue is integral to providing a good patient experience.
Having a superb healthcare service that lasts a long time requires not just a patient’s problem being alleviated. Sometimes it’s about the right amount of care and regular check-ins being offered to remind them of how much their wellbeing is valued:
In addition, if the services that you’re providing are already satisfactory, then your patients will be more than happy to offer their suggestions and insights. Most importantly, it makes them feel valued as their voices can be heard.
For example, sending a reminder of a patient’s next appointment, reminding patients of the annual full-body examination, etc.
According to teambuilding.com, 2500% more organisations are investing in virtual team building in response to COVID-19. A fundamental and integral part of providing a good healthcare service is that everyone on your team agrees and is committed to this concept.
Only then can your team deliver and convert this passion to real-life experiences for patients. Hosting workshops, inviting industry speakers to share best practices, or having team building activities can all have a positive influence on your goals.
Team-building or workshop activities can help boost morale, relax, and show your staff that they are not just doing a “job,” but that everyone is there to make an impact.
It’s important that they understand why improving the service and experience they provide to patients is beneficial to everyone involved and that there’s a higher cause besides job performance and the reputation of the organisation. Get your team and staff to rally on one unified purpose and clear goals. Then the rest is just consistent improvement and adjustment.
After all, the human-to-human experience can not be achieved from the outside. Through sharing experiences among the team, those who feel like they can contribute are encouraged to do so, which can result in higher morale, a clear vision shared, and a communal sense of purpose.
The last tip is the one that will probably touch the patients the most, which is showing empathy and care.
Source: Unsplash
Oftentimes, disconnects happen when staff treat patients as a case. Those patients feel like their wellbeing isn’t a priority. Other ways to make them feel important is to pay attention to what they say and provide feedback.
This can be achieved by making the space welcoming and relaxing, through music, decorations, and more. Engaging in conversations other than just medical chats can also relax patients.
Improving overall healthcare services is the priority in the industry around the world. At both the business and human level, everyone needs to think about how we can shift our mindset and approach by taking advantage of all the available technologies to reinvent the patient experience in the next decades.
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