In today’s healthcare environment, patient satisfaction is one of the key drivers of success for a healthcare provider or practice. Customer satisfaction can influence future reviews, patient loyalty, and long-term revenue.
In this post, we’ll share eight ways to increase patient satisfaction at your practice – from adjusting front desk policies to optimizing patient follow-up processes.
Why is patient satisfaction important in healthcare?
Beyond its literal meaning, the industry understanding of patient satisfaction measures patients’ expectations and assessments of the care they receive. By quantifying this satisfaction, providers can identify and analyze areas for improvement and take steps to improve treatment.
8 strategies to increase patient satisfaction
In the next section, we’ll discuss eight ways healthcare providers can increase patient satisfaction.
1. Strengthen front desk communication
Interactions with your front desk will be critical for new patients’ first impression of your practice. The front desk needs to engage them in a friendly way and help them check in quickly. Implement or refine your staff training to ensure that all staff members deliver a cohesive tone, messaging, and response to potential patient questions and concerns.
Likewise, it’s just as important to articulate and analyze the language used on the phone with new and current patients and the tone applied in appointment confirmations, whether verbal or written. You should create a friendly, inviting atmosphere while affirming to the patient they’re in good hands.
2. Personalize the patient experience
Along with general friendliness, your practice should also strive to incorporate personalization with patients. Create a rapport with repeat patients, and emphasize to your staff the importance of addressing patients by name, remembering past details, or noting preferences in their charts that would remind them of previous care or affirm the patient’s choice to come to your practice.
Depending on your resources, you can also implement digital intake forms or patient portals that allow an accessible, automatic way for patients to input information and receive the specific care that they’re looking for. Through this personalization and recognition, you can cultivate greater loyalty with your patient base.
3. Reduce wait time
It’s essential to offer an easy intake system and friendly staff. Still, one of the biggest consistent drivers of patient dissatisfaction is long wait times or uncertainty about wait times. According to research, 30% of patients will leave a doctor’s appointment if the wait is too long.
When your practice is crowded, be transparent with patients to set realistic expectations. You can’t always account for extended wait times. Still, you must ensure patients don’t see that extra wait time due to a lack of operational organization or insufficient staff resources.
Consider new strategies like scheduling buffers that allow extra time, automated reminders, or virtual waiting rooms that can all reduce patient wasted time. Your patients will respect that you value their time, and that’s the exact kind of standout quality that Ranq can help highlight through local SEO.
4. Be transparent about processes and costs
One of the most significant stresses for patients going to any practice is the anxiety about bills and the possibility of excluded charges on their bills when it comes to coverage. Surprise bills, vague timelines, or confusing language about the pricing of your care can erode trust with your customer base. They can lead to patients trying alternative practices or writing negative reviews online about their experience.
You can’t predict how insurance will react to every procedure. Still, a good rule is to give patients written estimates, FAQs, or links to policies that can help illuminate issues or gaps from their insurance provider in advance. Even if a patient finds these policies a pain point, they will appreciate that you were transparent about the overall costs.
5. Upgrade your physical space
After their experience with the front counter or the appointment system, patients’ second impression of your provider will be your practice’s physical space. Put yourself in the patient’s place and ask what their perception of the office would be. Is it clean? Are the seats comfortable enough for a long wait? Is the décor conducive to a calming patient experience?
When determining additions, consider things that will ease the waiting period. Consider adding Wi-Fi, water (or coffee), or entertainment in waiting areas, whether magazines or a television in a corner with subtitles to not disrupt the other patients. Outside your office, your practice’s website should also have photos that suggest a welcoming space for a patient. With these resources, the experts at Ranq can maximize your online potential and bring new customers to your practice.
6. Follow up after appointments
A thank-you always matters with patients, and every follow-up shows that your practice cares about their well-being. When you follow up with the patient after their appointment, you affirm that they’re a priority, which can lead to productive feedback, whether it’s positive or negative.
You don’t even need to do all this work by hand. You can incorporate automated tools to handle thank you messages, check-ins, and post-visit surveys. And with Ranq’s in-depth content marketing and SEO services, you can broadcast to all of your patients about the ease of using your practice.
7. Make it easy to leave feedback
It’s a step forward to offer the capability to leave feedback, but you also need to streamline the methods to do so. Consider using QR codes at checkout or email links so patients can write reviews instantly. The more reviews you have, the more you’ll be able to improve your organic search engine rankings. Ranq can even help you build a local SEO strategy to capitalize on this.
In turn, you should also respond to all feedback, whether positive or negative, internally available or submitted on consumer review sites like Yelp, Zocdoc, or Google. It’s another way to demonstrate you are listening to your patients’ feedback.
8. Use patient feedback to improve
It’s not enough to collect reviews and respond to patients; you also need to implement that feedback. If five reviews mention rude staff, that’s a training opportunity for those staff members and an opportunity to correct what went wrong with those patient experiences.
When regularly examining feedback, try to recognize themes within the comments and share them internally to adjust any policies that cause friction with your patients. Alternatively, praise exemplary behavior if reviews highlight positive experiences with a staff member or provider.
Ready to increase patient satisfaction?
Improving your customer satisfaction isn’t only about being friendlier or “nicer” to patients – it leads to more loyal patients, better reviews, and higher retention rates.
If you want to increase patient satisfaction within your own practice, look into implementing just a few of these strategies at a time. It can be intimidating to try to address a variety of issues at once, but Ranq can help to emphasize the parts of your practice that stand out from the competition and invigorate your practice’s online brand awareness.
