Strategic frameworks can align your mission and vision to improve patient experiences and provide the necessary directional support to achieve those goals. Setting goals is important, but setting down ways how to achieve them is just as important.
Introduction
The healthcare industry as a whole is experiencing a large shift in thought and practice when it comes to patient experiences. Hospitals and healthcare providers have realized since the turn of the millennia that higher patient satisfaction leads to overall better patient outcomes. This, in turn, drives higher revenues and growth for healthcare businesses.
But now the healthcare industry has a greater realization of what can drive patient satisfaction in hospital, the major one being patient experience. The expectations that patients have about their healthcare journey have changed wildly over the past few years, with patients having an increased luxury of choice. Along with the fact, that patients are now armed with more information than ever before, healthcare providers need to realize that just providing optimal care is not enough to ensure patient retention.
Now hospitals must work on implementing proper protocols and frameworks to ensure that the gap between a patient’s experience and their expectation is reduced, to maintain their competitive advantage over other businesses.
What are patient experiences?
Patient experience is the totality of the experience of a patient in their healthcare journey. It is the sum of all their interactions – which include thoughts, feelings, actions, touchpoints, channels, and more – with a healthcare provider or facility. Patient experience directly determines the satisfaction of a patient during a healthcare journey.
Healthcare is quickly becoming a service-oriented industry, changing from its poorly defined situation in the past. Patients have a plethora of service providers to choose from, and healthcare providers who are not actively enhancing patient experiences are going to be losing out to their competition.
Patients are just like a customer in any other industry, they have their expectations and if their experience isn’t satisfactory then they are liable to take their business somewhere else. But it’s not just the competitive edge that improved patient experiences provide that are important.
Surveys like the HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey and other pay-for-performance surveys that measure patient experiences mean that there is a greater financial ‘carrot-and-stick’ being associated with how satisfied a patient is with their healthcare journey.
Strategic Framework
To deliver great patient experiences in a consistent manner in the healthcare business, organizations need to ensure that there is a correct framework in place to support this goal. The bedrock of the framework is the culture of a healthcare organization. Accountability, engagement, and integrity are some of the key characteristics of a great organizational culture.
Through this cultural bedrock, healthcare organizations can introduce and implement patient-centric care journeys, which have been noted to be the driving force behind improved patient experiences.
As Dr. Hunter Doherty “Patch” Adams has found, treating the patient is a much better course of action than just trying to treat their illness.
“You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you’ll win, no matter what the outcome.” ~ Dr. Patch Adams
Here is an example of a strategic framework that can be followed to improve patient experiences:
Building accountability and buy-in in the staff through the creation of job titles and implementation of training initiatives
Improve patient-provider relationships by encouraging communication through multiple channels and allowing patients to have an equal amount of information as to their provider
Improving patient engagement through providing patients with information but also improving their knowledge and participation in their own journey
Making the business more approachable and empathetic by using customer-driven practices and creating a comfortable environment inside the hospital for clinical and surgical procedures
Consistently provide great outcomes to patients that align with their expectations
By implementing proper strategic frameworks, executives are able to align their healthcare processes to the expectations of the patients that they are serving. Through this healthcare organizations can improve their clinical outcomes, patient referrals, patient loyalty, and patient retention, and reduce the likelihood of medical malpractice claims.
Great patient experiences also lead to higher employee morale in the organization, which in turn can reduce attrition rates.
Healthcare organizations not only need to focus on providing quality medical care but great customer service as well, as one without the other will not be to the benefit of patients or the healthcare business.
Conclusion
Patient experiences are the critical factor that can determine the success or failure of a healthcare organization. Through the implementation of organizational changes and strategic frameworks, healthcare businesses can make a shift to patient-centric processes, allowing them to deliver great patient experiences.
BraveLabs will provide your healthcare business with the tools that it needs to implement strategic frameworks so that they can experience the benefits of great patient experiences and higher patient satisfaction.
BraveLabs is helping healthcare professionals with patients experience improvement through Patient Journey Management, early patient engagement with curated medical content, and more.
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