While healthcare might not seem at first glance to be a very customer-driven industry, in reality, patients ARE customers, and they expect the same kind of efficiency they get from retail or e-commerce companies. For this reason, many healthcare organizations are choosing the same types of solutions that retail organizations use, including data analytics, artificial intelligence, unified communications, call center technology and more. It’s not just about patient satisfaction, but also making the best use of resources across the healthcare spectrum for activities such as care, referrals, collections and hiring.
Healthcare organizations should listen to “the voice of the consumer,” according to Jason Mazeika, Director of Patient Experience at Zotec Partners, writing for Patient Engagement Hit. “Actively listen to patients — they’ll vocalize the challenges or pain points that exist. Then, take the steps and make the changes to enhance the experience,” wrote Mazeika. “Ask yourself how to make the financial experience as easy as possible. Once patients overwhelmingly say the billing process is really easy, continue to improve and make it even simpler.”
To enable a better experience, healthcare organizations should be gathering real-time patient feedback at every communications touchpoint from appointment scheduling to bill pay in order to build a more consumer-oriented, data-driven patient satisfaction strategy. This means unifying communications such as phone calls, chat interactions, email and even in-person visits.
A flexible, data-driven patient satisfaction strategy can help organizations make lasting changes, such as implementing payment options their consumers want (e.g., digital bill pay and payment plans) and creating omnichannel avenues for provider-patient communication, according to Zotec Partners. These changes will align precisely with what a specific provider’s population wants from their patient experience while also boosting the bottom line. But it can also inform more immediate improvements.
“The feedback practices get enables them to focus on what matters most—patients,” McMurray noted. “In the event of a negative interaction, real-time feedback empowers providers to perform service recovery and not let a poor experience potentially make its way to social media. The feedback also provides the necessary data to help drive the process or system improvement.”
Edited by
Luke Bellos
