How to improve the patient experience (9 ways AND a secret hack)

Whether you run a laser eye surgery clinic, tattoo removal clinic or a local GP surgery, you want to guarantee a positive patient experience. But, it's not always that easy, especially as being in the healthcare industry can mean your patients are attending an appointment (sometimes) unwillingly.

Health outcomes and clinical outcomes are sometimes outside of your control, but focusing on creating a comfortable and relaxing patient experience is key to your own business's reputation.

When dealing with patient outcomes and health in general, even if it's for aesthetic purposes like teeth whitening or tattoo removal, you want all your patients to have a positive experience. To improve patient satisfaction, you need to look at:

• Where you're lacking currently and what areas you need to improve upon for patient satisfaction (but how do you find this out? We'll tell you!)
• All the components that make up a positive patient experience and things to take note of

Let's dive into the enhanced patient experience and how it's the only way to boost your clinic's reputation.

Ways to improve the patient experience for all healthcare providers

Measuring the patient experience and patient satisfaction might fluctuate but, focus on:

• Minimal wait times
• Excellent customer service (always)
• Comforting and professional bedside manner. C'mon, Docs, we're looking at you here - patients want to be treated personably and with humanity
• Great communication
• Payment plans (a patient's health isn't cheap)
• Excellent patient resources
• Clean and modern healthcare facilities
• A calm atmosphere (elevator music might work for some people, but usually, it's just irritating and monotonous. A water feature with greenery might be enough noise without forcing the latest pop hits down people's throats)
• Employee engagement (people don't want to always meet new faces, they want to feel comfortable with long-term, committed employees)

A positive patient experience will vary from one patient to the other, so you can't expect all 5-star reviews, but, you can aim to provide quality services, in a relaxing and clean environment with excellent communication, always.

There will always be things out of your control, too, such as a long wait time - healthcare providers are usually always busy - but as long as you communicate this with those in the waiting room and express your apologies, your reviews should still be on the higher end of the star rating.

How do you decipher the current patient experience? Hack: part 1

If you're running a clinic, chances are you're time-poor and can sometimes let things slip when it comes to quality improvement initiatives. Whilst you're focused on better health outcomes for your patients, patient communication or patient satisfaction can be put on the back foot.

Figuring out where you're going wrong with the patient experience currently is how you're going to improve it.

You might not even be aware that the patient experience at your clinic is slipping. If you haven't paid attention to your current Google or Yelp reviews, or you're just not seeing much action there anyway (Cloutly can help with that), there are other ways fully gauge where the experience is lacking.

Patient experience data can be grabbed through patient surveys and focus groups. But, the best way to improve your reputation is through focusing on review management.

With your text reviews or video testimonials driven through tools like Cloutly, you can find out first-hand patient feedback on how to improve patient satisfaction and where the flaws in your business lie. Using reputation management software not only helps answer your problems - literally (people will tell you where you're going wrong) - it also helps you attract more patients.

How to reach more prospective patients? Hack: part 2

Now that you're fixing up the patient experience with your research and improvements, you might want to look to reach more prospective patients. Healthcare providers rely on the 'need and demand' factor of business, but it is still a competitive industry. Your competitors will also be upping the patient experience and making sure they're grabbing new patients, too.

So, the best hack to improve revenue and increase your patient base is to focus (again) on reputation management with a tool like Cloutly. The more positive reviews you have across Google and other review sites will help you get more customers. How? Well, let's break it down.

• You'll appear credible
• New customers will trust you more
• Authentic social proof is more believable than expensive marketing
• More Google reviews increase your chances of landing in the Map-Pack (meaning you'll increase your chances of appearing in front of new patients each day)

Just through online reputation management and being proactive in requesting reviews (and responding to them), you can build trust with new patients, boost credibility and be ever-present on mammoth platforms like Google.

Final thoughts

The fact of the matter is, that the patient experience needs to be high-quality for the patient and you. It will affect your revenue if you're providing a shoddy service and an uncomfortable patient environment.

There are many ways to improve patient satisfaction - just listen to your reviews! Customer feedback is how you'll best increase patient retention. Your clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction are how you'll stay on top as a healthcare provider.

So, get your patient satisfaction scores to an all-time high and reap the rewards of review management with Cloutly.