How to Improve Patient Experience & Satisfaction

There are many benefits to improving the patient experience and increasing patient satisfaction levels. Here, we’ll discuss why the patient journey should be a focus for your organization and how to improve patient experience.

Why Improve patient experience & satisfaction?

Improving the patient experience is linked to many benefits, including:

  • A reduction in overall costs
  • Earlier identification of diseases
  • Overall improved health results
  • More compliant patients
  • Improving the patient journey from end-to-end

Not only is improving the patient experience important, but it was also mandated in 2017 by the ACA that medical practices must conduct and submit a survey for improving the patient experience. The purpose of this check system is to encourage medical practitioners to take more responsibility in improving the patient experience.

The role of voice technology

Voice technology has recently emerged as a helpful tool in improving patient experience. There are myriad benefits to voice technology for healthcare such as:

  • Enabling users to access information more quickly
  • Making healthcare more accessible for those living in rural areas
  • Making medical care processes easier for patients having to make frequent appointments (elderly, disabled, chronic disease, etc.)
  • Better disease management through automated system tracking and data collection

What’s more, when medical practices have the powerful tool of voice technology, it improves the overall patient journey. It has the potential to keep patients more engaged, improve accessibility, and remove a lot of the common complications involved with receiving treatment.

Ways to improve

If you feel your patient experience could improve, or if you hope to optimize a journey that’s already working well, here are important ways on how to improve the patient experience:

Listen and be respectful toward patients

It’s something that’s so simple, but many medical practitioners do not do consistently. Going in for medical appointments can often be stressful for patients, even if they are in good health. Before assigning medication or quickly diagnosing, it’s important to listen carefully to what the patient has to say and be respectful toward their feelings on their own health.

Make sure all healthcare staff—from receptionists to nursing staff—are educated and trained on how to handle patients in a caring and sensitive manner and put accountability measures in place. This can be done by:

  • Conducting exit satisfaction interviews with patients
  • Enacting patient complaint processes
  • General satisfaction interviews

Reduce as much friction as possible

Healthcare practices should commit to reducing as much friction in the patient experience as possible. Some examples of this are implementing an appointment scheduling system (preferably online), keeping communication lines open by staggering staff schedules, tracking patient care through intuitive software, and implementing voice technology so systems are more automated.

Leverage analytics to take more informed action

When medical facilities use innovative technology to their advantage, they can gain valuable insights about how to improve the patient experience that they otherwise may not have considered. Analytics through technology can help medical practitioners analyze things like demographics, health goals, results, and unique points of view on patient data.

Get patients more involved

You can improve the patient experience by getting them more involved in setting and achieving their health goals. Today with all of the medical information that’s readily available online, patients are generally more informed about their own health than they were 30 years ago. Because patients are taking more interest and an active role in their personal health, it’s important to have an attitude of working alongside patients to best serve their needs.

If you’re looking for better ways on how to improve the patient experience, let Fusion Narrate be the tool that helps you achieve this goal. Discover how our voice recognition technology can improve the patient journey today.