Whether it be advanced treatment or a regularly scheduled check-up, healthcare delivery cannot merely rely on effective scheduling, billing and reporting.
For healthcare to be truly successful, patients need to actively participate in their plans of care, which means providers should start fostering real relationships and encouraging open collaboration.
In light of Patient Experience Week (PX Week), we’re taking some time to focus on strategies that can help your practice boost patient satisfaction all throughout their journey.
Patient Revenue Cycle
The right revenue cycle management (RCM) platform can make all the difference for a healthcare provider who is struggling to reduce claim denials and monitor spending. As more patients are adopting digital alternatives to paper billing, it is important for providers to leverage electronic statements or e-statements that give patients better price transparency, increased convenience and easy access to their account balances. Unfortunately, most providers have still yet to meet these evolving patient demands. In fact, a study shows that only a few healthcare practices have automated more than a quarter of their financial processes, with a huge number falling behind.
By utilizing eStatements and online personal payment plans, providers can establish greater trust and credibility all while optimizing workflow efficiencies as well as motivating patients to pay their bills on time and in full.
Patient Satisfaction and Outcome Tracking
Every practice should track patient satisfaction and monitor feedback through the use of automated engagement campaigns and intuitive outcomes reporting. One critical metric to measure is Net Promoter Scores (NPS), which allow patients to rate their experiences and make recommendations. Not only do NPS and other value surveys validate patient opinions, but they also give providers the ability to better understand patient expectations and standards.
In addition to surveys, emails or clinical questionnaires are also great forms of patient engagement and automating these processes allows providers to be more adequately equipped to deliver optimized care as well as effectively monitor patient journeys.
Read the eBook:
The Impact of Customer Experience on Practice Revenue
Telehealth, Virtual Waiting Rooms and More
Through telehealth, providers have the opportunity to deliver virtual care that encourages patients to pursue continuity of treatment in the comfort of their own homes. It also allows for providers to more efficiently manage front desk operations and better balance influxes of scheduled in-person visits, so that social distancing guidelines can still be properly enforced.
Furthermore, telehealth enables providers to virtually capture clinical documentation, discuss conditions, interact through screen sharing and prescribe prescriptions all via a secure online interface. It even lets patients check into virtual waiting rooms or better yet employ quick response (QR) codes that direct them to informational web links, online portals or digital appointment scheduling tools.
Self-Check In Kiosks and Patient Dashboards
For the sake of efficient practice management, missed appointments, cancellations or no-shows can all be very costly and disruptive.
By automating appointment reminders and implementing seamless scheduling features, providers have a better chance of improving their patients’ arrival rates as well as streamlining clinical performance.
Beyond self-scheduling, providers can also empower patients to fill out paperwork, submit their medical history and complete questionnaires from one single source dashboard or kiosk. This allows for more flexible functionality and decreases the risks of in-office Covid-19 exposure.
Business Intelligence and Analytics
Ultimately, the purpose of healthcare is to help patients achieve their optimal well-being. In order to do this, providers need to take advantage of a business intelligence software that can systematically track patient outcomes, analyze financial trends, monitor key performance metrics and map out critical data points.
While most may think business intelligence doesn’t involve engagement, it most certainly does! With robust reporting filters, comprehensive drop downs and easy-to-use dashboards, providers are able to easily make informed decisions that heavily impact patient experiences such as hospital admission rates, referral sources and predictive analytics.
Patient Experience Week: Continuous Improvement
Although Patient Experience Week is a brief time allotted for advocacy, now more than ever, we all need to acknowledge the importance of open communication each and every day. While improving patient engagement is essential for any practice that wants to deliver exceptional, personalized care, it also serves as an outlet for patients to be heard and recognized throughout their entire journey.