Smart Ways To Improve Patient Experience In Your Healthcare PracticeSaved to Drive

Running a successful healthcare business means putting your patients first in everything you do. Indeed, the importance of ensuring that every patient has a positive experience every time they interact with your practice cannot be overstated. The good news is you can find some of the smartest and most practical ways to maintain the highest quality of patient experience in your health care practice below. Just keep reading to find out what they are. 

Prioritise patient comfort.

Health issues can be particularly difficult for many people because they involve a certain amount of worry and physical discomfort. That is why prioritising patient comfort is crucial when it comes to improving patient experience. Indeed, the more comfortable your patients are throughout their journey, the more positive an experience they are likely to have.  

Happily, there is a range of things you can do to prioritise patient comfort in your practice. The first, and arguably the most important one, is to make sure you listen to each patient. Listening is not only important because it will tell you the information you need to know exactly how to proceed, but the act itself humanises and ensures your patient feels like an individual with a voice and role in the treatment and not just a cog in the machine, whose treatment is being done to them. 

To help facilitate this it can be useful to send your practitioners and other staff on acting listening courses. Active listening is where someone learns how to hear what the other person is really saying. They do this by repeating back to them what they think they have said, which both provides the opportunity for clarity, and helps reassure the person that they have indeed been truly heard. 

Another way you can prioritise patient comfort is to consider using tactics that make physically uncomfortable procedures more comfortable. For instance, a dental practice might offer numbing injections for cleaning for a nervous patient, while a gynaecologist may offer distraction techniques for a smear, or an anesthetic for a cervical biopsy. Indeed, such accommodations can not only make the patient more comfortable but also help them to access healthcare that they might otherwise avoid. 

Invest in the best tools and equipment.

You can also improve patient experience by investing in the best, state-of-the-art tools and equipment for your practice. There are many benefits to doing this, including making examinations and treatments faster, thereby using up less of your patients' time, and allowing more people to get an appointment with your practice. 

Another way in which investing in the latest technology for your practice can help improve patient experience is that it can make things much more physically comfortable as well. Something that we already know from above can have a very positive effect on the experience your patients have with you. For example, in a dentist office you can use digital imaging technology rather than trays. This makes your clients' experience far less messy and physically unformattable, and so improves their overall experience of your practice. 

Invest in your premises. 

You can also help improve your patient experience by investing in your premises. This can mean things as basic as having comfortable chairs for the waiting room or having enough space to use private booking booths instead of the receptionist to book repeat appointments. 

Another factor that can improve patient experience is having a premise that is easily accessible or all on one level. This can make it much easier for those with mobility issues or disabilities to access the services you are providing. 

Evening making sure that the premises you buy are easy to reach not only by car, but by public transport can make a massive difference to the experience of your patients. Especially those that are dependent on the latter, as they may already have had a long taxing journey to reach you before their appointment even begins. 

Make billing easy. 

Billing is one of the most crucial stages of the patient journey, and so it can make or break the patient experience. One issue here is that a patient may be quoted one price at the beginning of treatment only to find that the final bill is much higher. This can create a real mistrust and stop them from coming back to you again, and encourage them to leave negative reviews. 

You can also improve your patients' billing experience by outsourcing this aspect of your service to a service like these dental virtual assistant professionals. The great thing about a virtual dental assistant is that you get a highly trained and carefully vetted specialist who can deal with a range of tasks, including billing. This then frees up your staff to focus on face-to-face patient care, while also ensuring that patients get the clearest and most accurate billing experience at the same time. 

Invest in a good website. 

Drag and drop websites can be great for some types of small business. However when you are running a practice, a more professional setup should always be considered. This is because your website is the first thing that many patients will see when they consider coming to you for treatment, and you'll definitely want to impress at this point in their journey. 

Additionally, the quality of your website will further impact your patient's experience because well-built and customized site will make it easier for them to navigate, book appointments, pay their bills and contact you. 

To that end a site customised with your target patient in mind is usually an excellent investment when it comes to patient experience. 

Ensure that making an appointment is simple. 

Last of all, when it comes to ensuring your patients have a positive experience when dealing with your practice you have to make sure that it's simple, and quick for them to make an appointment. 

The first part of this is to make sure that you have enough staff to offer them an appointment within a reasonable time frame. This is because if you cannot provide an appointment for months and a patient needs care now, they are very likely to have a negative experience and so go elsewhere,. 

Also having a reminder system in place that sends a text message to patients to remind them of their booking can create a much better patient experience. This is because they know they will get an additional head up when they have an appointment coming up, so it relieves some of the mental load associated with it, making it less stressful. This type of reminder system is also good for your practice because it ensures that patients confirm their attendance, cutting down on missed appointments, which can waste valuable resources like time and money. 

Next, having to spend a lot of time and effort securing an appointment at your practice can be a real turn-off for patients. That means you will need to make the appointment booking process as fast and as simple as possible. 

This may include employing extra people for appointment setting by phone or zoom, as well as offering the opportunity to do this online. However, if you choose the latter, then allowing new patients or those with concerns to book a zoom consultation can provide that extra more personal touch and reassurance they need during this process. After all, people tend to have higher anxiety levels around health issues, and they often need additional emotional support and care in this area.