What Constitutes the Patient Experience? How Can You Improve It?

What Constitutes the Patient Experience?

How Can You Improve It? Communication is important to ensure positive patient experience. It is vital in many healthcare processes also, such as medical transcription outsourcing.

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Consumer experience is most important in any service setting, including healthcare. In the healthcare sector, patient-centred care strategies are gaining prominence and the focus is now on improving the patient experience. As any medical transcription outsourcing service knows, accurate healthcare data and documentation is most important to ensure improved patient care and patient experience. What constitutes the patient experience?

The Patient Experience – What Is It? The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) points out that the patient experience “encompasses the range of interactions that patients have with the health care system, including their care from health plans, and from doctors, nurses, and staff in hospitals, physician practices, and other health care facilities.” It includes elements of healthcare quality, patient satisfaction, and convenient care. This brings home the significance of healthcare professionals understanding what constitutes the patient experience as well as how they can provide positive patient experience. To work towards an improved patient experience, healthcare professionals should: •

Focus on care quality and safety as parts of the patient experience

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Use patient-centred tactics to enhance patient satisfaction and care access

Restoring the Human Touch to Healthcare – the Dignity Health Example California-based Dignity Health Medical Foundation that operates medical groups was initially focused on physician productivity alone, as Joseph Jasser, M.D who took over as President and CEO of the organization in 2013, observes. The organization had low patient satisfaction scores, low staff morale and high physician turnover at that time.

Jasser set about to bring a constructive change in this organization, and for this he worked with Jake Poore, President and CEO of Integrated Loyalty Systems. They collaborated to change Dignity Health’s culture to a patient-centric one. Poore outlined a model that employs a patient-driven, employee-developed culture to bring about changes that are in line with the increasingly value-based definition of success in healthcare today. Once the changes were implemented, Dignity Health saw a 20% increase on patient satisfaction surveys in 2 years.

Here are the techniques that Jasser and Poore recommend that healthcare organizations can adopt and modify if needed, to improve patient care.

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Bring back the human touch: The organization’s culture should encourage kindness and compassion. All staff members, from doctors and other clinicians to administrative staff and the security personnel in the organization should be

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friendly, kind and hospitable. Addressing patients by the name they prefer is a great way to show warmth and generosity. Staff should ideally wear name tags the patients can see.

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Ensure that billing staff complies with your patient experience efforts: Patient experience does not end with the patient-doctor encounter. The billing staff spends considerable time on the phone speaking to patients, and so their role is very important in improving patient experience.

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Do not speak to patients using difficult medical terms or slang: Talk to your patients in simple language so that they can clearly understand details about their health condition and the instructions provided. Do not use medical jargon and acronyms to avoid confusing your patients and giving them a difficult time.

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Be consistent: Etiquette for hospital staff such as knocking before entering the exam room, positioning the computers in a way that allows eye-to-eye contact between the physician and patient, and so on should be consistent across your organization. Train new employees on the rules you have and bring them onboard with your patient experience efforts.

The Need for Convenient Healthcare Access No doubt, you can improve patient experience by ensuring high quality care and patient satisfaction. Patients must also be ensured easy and convenient healthcare access.

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Access to healthcare may be difficult in rural areas where geographical barriers exist. Such barriers can be successfully addressed with the help of telehealth and other advanced technologies.

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Financial barriers exist in the way of ensuring a good patient experience.

According to a January report funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 70 percent of patients who encounter financial barriers to care need better cost transparency. It is important to ensure payment plans and clearer bill pay instructions to enable them to better manage their healthcare finances.

Patient Experience Is Similar to Retail Experience As Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD points out, a positive patient experience means that providers go beyond their traditional healing duties and ground all of their work in respect for the patient. Peter S. Fine, FACHE, President and CEO of Banner Healthcare believes that patient experience is similar to retail experience. A consumer shopping for something looks for quality goods, and at the same time expects respect from sales associates and customized products. This concept prevails in healthcare as well. When patients shell out more out-of-pocket healthcare expenses, they are likely to become

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choosier about where they go for treatment. Healthcare providers that focus on a patient-centric experience are more likely to keep patients happy and ensure returning patients.

Healthcare providers can improve outcomes by incorporating patient safety and care quality as vital parts of the patient experience. Providers should ensure better patientphysician communication. Communication is a vital aspect in many healthcare processes as well, such as when outsourcing medical transcription. Patients who can speak freely to their doctors trust them and are more likely to speak about their care preferences or safety concerns. The many pre-requisites of a positive patient experience may seem intimidating. But putting the patient first and ensuring that all their personal and healthcare needs are met is vital for any healthcare business.

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