The healthcare industry is undergoing a major transformation.
From curbside check-ins and parking lot waiting rooms to telemedicine and virtual care, patients now expect consumer-like experiences. But many healthcare organizations have been slow to make the shift, and patient satisfaction has plummeted as a result—with an alarming 81% of patients reporting dissatisfaction with their healthcare experience.
Whether you’re a large hospital system or a small medical office, to tackle this problem, you will need to turn to data and technology to create exceptional patient experiences amidst an ever-changing business landscape.
Old systems and processes will need to go. Long gone are the days of doing things one way simply because that’s the way they’ve always been done. Healthcare providers need to be able to quickly adapt to our ever-evolving digital world as patients expect digital-first experiences, streamlined data access, and shorter wait times to see providers. If your healthcare organization can’t keep up, you’ll see patient satisfaction rates steadily drop.
To better serve your patients, consider these digital ways to enhance your operations.
Make it personal.
Personalization is paramount to improving patient engagement, outcomes, and satisfaction. Many patients don’t feel loyal to their health system because they have to fill out the same stack of paper forms again and again. The process feels repetitive, clunky, out of touch, and impersonal. If they can’t trust you to keep and collect their data in a streamlined way, they may doubt your ability to stay on top of other trends—like new treatments.
Patients also want to feel heard. Organizations need to not only look for opportunities to digitize patient touchpoints, but also use the data they collect to create personalized, positive experiences:
- Can patients schedule and cancel appointments online?
- Can they request medication refills through your system?
- Do you send them reminder emails or text messages when it’s time for preventative or follow-up care?
- Do you even know if they’d prefer to be texted, emailed, or called?
Knowing the answer to these questions and offering your patients some control over their experience not only takes away from your already full workload, but it also lets patients reach out to you where and when they want.
Rethink your systems.
Improving the patient experience doesn’t just have a positive effect on patient satisfaction. It also leads to improved efficiency for your organization and higher employee retention. Healthcare positions are at a premium right now, so it’s vital for healthcare organizations to implement processes that reduce stress and help employees be more productive.
A great way to start this process is by asking staff to provide information on where pain points lie. Identifying where frustration and bottlenecks occur can give you a jumpstart on revamping outdated processes and reassessing existing systems—ultimately ensuring that employees have the resources they need to be successful and meet patient expectations.
Consider using no-code tools.
The need for new systems, tools, and processes is clear. But what technology should you invest in? For many healthcare orgs, the answer is no-code tools. No-code tools include software, systems, or products that allow users to build a solution without needing to know any code. These tools enable non-technical workers in any department to create the processes they need to get work done—without needing support from IT.
This type of software provides you a visual arena to build your processes, usually with a drag-and-drop menu of options. From onboarding patients and collecting medical histories to generating patient invoices and accepting payments, no-code software makes it extremely quick and easy to develop solutions to your most difficult problems.
If you are still using paper or other outdated processes and systems to manage patients, it’s time to update your tech stack with solutions that can help you automate workflows from start to finish. Not only will you become more agile and ready to adapt to the ever-changing environment of healthcare, but you’ll increase patient satisfaction and retain more patients overall.