In the past, when talking about customer experience, we would think mainly about buyers, guests, or consumers. However, now times have changed and outstanding quality of service becomes vital in virtually every market sector. The situation is no different when it comes to the healthcare industry. How to obtain feedback on the customer patient’s experience and increase profits of your institution? Keep reading!
What is the patient’s experience?
To discuss metrics and solutions that can help you take your patient’s experience to the next level, first it’s crucial to define the concept.
Patient experience denotes all the emotions and feelings patients experience when interacting with a healthcare institution. The whole concept includes elements like health plans, punctuality, access to information, quality of provided care, as well as communication, attitude, and qualifications of doctors, nurses, and other specialists.
All of this translates into the overall satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with received healthcare service. Although a patient’s experience is frequently referred to as patient satisfaction, these two terms shouldn’t be used interchangeably, as they denote entirely different concepts. The first one is used to describe more tangible and objective concepts, whereas patient satisfaction is a totally subjective metric that evaluates solely one’s contentment with received services.
Customer’s experience vs. patient’s experience
At first sight, it might seem that customer and patient experience have a lot in common. After all, entities (regardless of the sector they operate in) willing to improve their brand image and profits should strive to achieve the highest possible levels of these two metrics.
Nevertheless, it turns out that there are a few significant discrepancies that make the patient’s experience concept unique:
- voluntariness — as a customer, you decide to buy a given product or benefit from a selected service, because you simply want to do it. As a patient, your health condition frequently forces you to undergo certain examinations or procedures.
- objectives — when you are a patient, you strive to protect your health or life and this is your main motivation. On the other hand, as a buyer, you want to satisfy your needs and profit from available deals.
- control — when you plan to buy a pair of shoes, you can virtually visit hundreds of stores and choose the one that meets your requirements. If you are a patient who needs help (especially in urgent cases), you are at the mercy of doctors and can’t leave only because someone doesn’t behave in a preferred way.
Although these differences may seem insignificant, when you think about them deeply, you’ll realize that patient’s experience is an extremely important metric that can affect both the mental and physical health of patients.
How to make a great patient experience?
Looking for a way to improve your patient’s experience? To do it, set a few KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that allow you to regularly measure your results.
- Empathy — a good specialist is empathetic. Although certain conditions may be daily bread to you, it’s worth remembering that patients can feel stressed, anxious, or worried. Try to be considerate of their feelings.
- Quality communication — treating every patient personally, greeting them, and making sure that they know your name is a great way to guarantee that people feel satisfied and cared for.
- Cutting-edge technology — although this point may not apply in all cases, technology can effectively support medical care and helps to solve certain problems related to appointments or examination results.
Tools for collecting feedback on the customer’s patient’s experience
Do you want to streamline the operation of your healthcare or pharmaceutical institution? If so, there are a few tools and indicators that can help you do it:
1. CAHPS
CAHPS (Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) surveys are the main source of information for healthcare institutions that care about patients’ well-being. Thanks to them, it’s possible to evaluate the quality of provided services and determine which elements need improvement. During the survey, patients are asked about aspects that are vital for them, such as the level of service, communication, hospital cleanliness, or the average time needed to get the response.
2. Net Promoter Score
Thanks to analyzing this score, it’s possible to find out whether patients are likely to recommend a specific healthcare institution to friends or family members.
3. Customer Effort Score
With this metric, institutions can determine whether patients are satisfied with the service and find it easy to access necessary help.
4. Overall Service
The metric gives valuable insight into the expectations of patients and makes it easier to define which aspects need improvement to provide an even greater experience.
The takeaway
Quality feedback on the customer patient’s experience is a great way to ensure the comfort and well-being of people visiting healthcare institutions. Taking all the abovementioned elements into account and making communication as personal and empathetic as possible is the recipe for winning patients’ hearts and providing high-end services.
What is the consumerization of the healthcare industry and how to adapt to the new normal? Check out our blog post!
