Patient Experience
Whether they enter the door or call by phone, customers immediately experience the manner in which they are treated as persons. Most individuals do not experience “gold standard” medical protocols surrounding their condition or even high quality medical care. They do, however, experience the way they are received, greeted, informed, treated, handed off and moved around, fed, clothed and handled. A well designed customer experience ensures patient loyalty, eliminates waste, and enhances provider financial outcomes.
Regardless of a person’s medical condition or reason for engaging a provider, it is important for both patient and provider that the stage is set to provide the best possible customer experience. This includes every aspect of the provider’s services in the care delivery value chain as well as every administrative or collateral service which touches the patient.
Every process which either affects the patient or with which the patient or their family interact must be impeccably managed. Orchestrating the patient-centric experience requires the elimination of poor coordination, bottlenecks, wasted time and information breakdowns; it improves the provider’s operational and financial outcomes and turns the patient into an evangelist for the provider’s services.
Patients are your customers and, as such, can abandon or speak ill of you if they feel that their concerns, no matter what the domain (administrative, personal, medical, and others), have not been listened to and made to disappear. Patients value their self esteem and want to be treated with dignity and care.
A provider mission is incomplete if it does not take into account the impression it wants its patients to receive throughout the healthcare experience, whether physical or virtual, such as in online experiences. At a minimum the patient experience must convey warmth, caring and professionalism during every patient interaction with staff whether medical specialists, technical personnel or janitorial staff. Every hand-off should be managed with care.
The patient experience should be choreographed from the parking lot to the welcome desk through send off. This requires designing the look and feel of the experience for the community served. It requires the design of impeccable coordination through every step of care, the creation of touch-point practices that engage the patient in his or her care, and the development of staff behaviors, attitudes and interpersonal skills.
Process Edge works with its clients at every stage in creating the total patient experience, from the design of concept to execution, including the design of process coordination, touch-point practices, commitment practices, behaviors, attitudes and interpersonal skills. Our methodology ensures that the patient-centric experience produces improved outcomes, more efficient operations, referrals, community recognition and a significantly improved bottom line.
