Patients who have satisfying, engaging experiences with healthcare tend to fare better than those who do not. What might seem like a backward way of looking at things has proved to be an especially powerful tool for those who are concerned with improving healthcare outcomes and cutting costs.
As a result, groups like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services increasingly encourage hospitals and other healthcare organizations to focus on patient experience. Surveys like those conducted by Press Ganey are even used to determine reimbursement rates and eligibility for other forms of support.
Improve press ganey scores by fine-tuning the user experiences of patients, and an entire organization can benefit. There are four proven ways to make sure that patients and their family members enjoy high-quality healthcare experiences.
1. Encourage Involvement
Some hospitals can feel like assembly lines where patients are simply materials waiting for processing. Patients often take such perceptions to heart and become withdrawn or even alienated, as a result.
When patients become more involved in and engaged with healthcare, though, their experiences and outcomes improve. Not only do they become likely to make better decisions at the point of care delivery, but they also keep up with doctors’ orders more reliably later on.
There are many proven ways to encourage patients to become more involved, quite a few of them also being highly accessible. Although other survey results sometimes receive more attention, paying attention to how involved patients feel with their healthcare will often be the best first step.
2. Make Communication Easier
Even patients who feel empowered to make their own healthcare decisions often lack the required information. Overworked doctors and nurses can seem uncommunicative even when they would love to be educating and informing their patients.
A lack of communication, though, will always leave patients worse off than a healthy amount of it. Studies consistently show that “effective and efficient communication is crucial in healthcare,” more or less regardless of the other particulars.
Fortunately, there are now plenty of tools that can be used to open up new lines of communication. HIPAA-compliant mobile apps designed for this purpose, for example, keep patients in the loop at all times.
3. Make Your Hospital More Hospitable
Spending every last dime on treatments, equipment, and supplies can leave a hospital feeling overly cold and unpleasant. Even patients who generally respect pragmatism and practicality tend to succumb to dampened spirits when spending time in such places.
Thinking even a bit about the comfort and mindset of patients will almost always reveal straightforward ways of supporting them. Even minor improvements made to the character of a hospital can improve the experiences of patients significantly. For example, respecting their privacy and showing complete interest in their health. You can install patient privacy screens for proper physical examination and discuss their health without anyone looking which gives them a sense of comfort.
4. Rethink Your Interfaces
Improving user experience in the realm of software has become an almost relentless obsession for many. There are many other kinds of interfaces whose nature and refinement ultimately contribute to the experiences patients have when obtaining healthcare.
Looking into points of contact like registration procedures and nurses’ rounds should highlight plenty of ways to enable higher-quality experiences for patients. That can ultimately mean watching survey scores soar and enjoying all the benefits that come from making such progress.
There are Always Ways to Improve
Few hospitals or clinics would ever be satisfied, organizationally speaking, with delivering care whose quality plateaus or even declines over time. Adopt the same attitude regarding the user experiences of patients, and survey results will naturally improve along with outcomes.
