4 Ways to Improve Healthcare Patient Satisfaction

While customer satisfaction is an important metric for all businesses, it is vital in the medical field, where a patient's level of satisfaction can impact their overall health. According to PatientEngagementHIT, some research suggests that patients who are more satisfied with their medical treatment tend to take better care of themselves. For this reason – amongst others – it's essential for medical practitioners to constantly be on the lookout for ways to improve their patients' experience.

Make Prompt Appointment Check-ins

One sure way to improve patient satisfaction is to make their check-ins at the front desk faster and decrease time spent in the waiting room. No matter how comfortable you make the space or how friendly your staff is, no one likes to wait around for hours. Your patients prioritize their health by coming in; therefore, it is your job to prioritize them once they enter your office. One way to prioritize your patients and ensure they have a smooth check-in process is by implementing patient intake software. Patient intake software – like ChartMedic – can help you make your check-in process more efficient, thus improving patient satisfaction.

Prioritize Communication

According to the National Library of Medicine, communication errors are a major factor (70%) in adverse events. From your first interaction with a patient, prioritizing open communication can help them feel comfortable and more willing to share symptoms or conditions they deem embarrassing. Emphasizing patient-doctor communication means you and your staff should be clear and direct, ask and answer any questions a patient might have, and initiate welcoming interactions – especially with new patients.

Improve Job Satisfaction for Your Staff

In any service industry, happy workers make for happy customer experiences. While healthcare is an essential service rather than a commercial business, the same logic applies. When your front desk staff and employees spend more time doing what they love – like caring for patients – and less time taking care of the paperwork, their job satisfaction is bound to increase. Increases in job satisfaction strongly correlate with improved quality of work and production.

Make Your Interactions Personal

When you maintain eye contact with a patient, it helps them understand you are listening and prioritizing their experiences. However, this can be difficult when healthcare professionals often need to refer to different charts and screens while in appointments. In some cases, physicians even require a medical scribe in their consultations to give patients full attention. But with advances in health information technology, you can have all your charting integrated into one place and have the patient's answers to your questions already compiled and available before the appointment. When you create a personal connection with your patients, it allows them to feel more comfortable disclosing personal information about their symptoms, thus allowing medical providers to make a more accurate diagnosis.

Improve Patient Satisfaction With the ChartMedic System

At ChartMedic, we understand treatment decisions are founded on accurate information. Our system captures essential patient data and presents it to the provider during the appointment so that the recording of complete information doesn‘t hinder patient interaction. ChartMedic's system has been implemented everywhere, from small clinics to major hospitals, with proven success. We believe that improving the process of capturing and recording patient data can greatly benefit the overall health of the patients we serve.

Fill out a form and find out how ChartMedic can improve your patient satisfaction ratings in a few easy steps.