Recently there has been a rise in medical practitioners acknowledging their patients are dissatisfied with their service. Most of the dissatisfaction comes from misdiagnosis and poor service.
When patients walk through the door, they come with high expectations. Before visiting a certain practice, they will often use tools such as reviews and social media to do their research ahead of time. And if you have bad reviews, potential patients will likely go elsewhere.
We are in an age where practitioners and other clinicians must raise the bar for the overall patient experience. We are an ideal source of referrals and this will help the practice grow.
Today we will look at ten creative ways you can implement to improve overall patient satisfaction.
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10 Creative Ways To Increase Patient Satisfaction
1. Engage With Your Patients Online
Many patients will want to interact with your practice before ever meeting you in person. That’s why first impressions are crucial. Utilizing avenues such as websites, contact forms, and chatbots are ways that future patients can get to know you before they even step into your office.
Patients also want convenience when booking appointments, so having online appointment applications on your website also helps.
2. Improve communication with patients
The first step in patient communication is answering phone calls promptly or returning them if you can’t get to them the first time. If your staff doesn’t have the answers immediately for the patient, ensure there is a plan to refer them to someone who can help.
Making sure that office staff answers emails back promptly after receiving a “contact us” form from the website, for example, is vital as no one likes to wait for an answer.
Related Links: The Hero’s Journey Of Functional Medicine in 2022
3. Create an appointment process
To have a successful practice, you must have an appointment-setting process and a rescheduling process that makes it simple for patients to use. Keep the office lines open if you can during lunch, and if you can’t, make sure there is an alternative way for patients to get ahold of someone.
4. Be Quick About Answering and Returning Phone Calls
You should never keep patients on hold for more than 15 seconds, especially new ones. Also, try to avoid transferring calls — this can frustrate the patient and give them a sense of disorganization within your organization.
Establish a time frame with your office staff in which to return phone calls and emails. Set the standard high because this can be the difference between getting a new patient, to having one leave you for another clinic.
Related Links: Health and Wellness Branding Tips For Functional Medicine Practitioners
5. Create A Simplified Billing Process
Billing patients is a necessary evil, but make sure the process is easy and allows customers to pay their bills in full using various methods of payment.
Your staff should be knowledgeable and trained on how to discuss payments with customers and how to collect them without causing angst among your patients. Make sure the bills’ explanations are clearly understood and the components that make up each bill.
6. Ask Your Patients To Provide Feedback
The only way your practice will improve is to allow customers to provide feedback. Don’t be afraid of feedback, and use it to enhance your practice and grow for the better.
Encourage your patients to give reviews on your Google My Business page and other prominent social media sites such as your Facebook page. Make it easy for them to post reviews by providing links to your review pages.
You can also create surveys and ask your patients to fill them out, whether in person or via email. Patients will enjoy giving you their feedback if they are a long-time customer because they ultimately know that it will improve their own experiences down the road as well.
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7. Create Ways To Stay In Touch With Your Patients
Follow-up is extremely important because it gives your patients a stronger sense of worth to your practice and helps to establish a bond with their doctors and the practitioners who care for them.
Start by sending out monthly newsletters and giving your patients advice and tips about generic healthcare items, for example. Make sure you include an opt-in area on your website, as well as opt-out links at the bottom of each newsletter.
8. Cultivate long-term relationships
Make sure you focus on the long-term relationship with your patients and not just the short-term. Building rapport and getting to know your patients personally may seem minor, but it goes a long way in an industry where many medical practitioners have too many patients and not enough time.
Sending simple things like birthday cards and holiday well-wishes can go a long way in showing that you value your patient’s business. You may even train your staff to pick up the phone and make a call once a year to your patients to check and see how they are.
Related Links: Embracing Lifestyle Health
9. Provide More Education and Resources To Your Patients
Providing your patients with the knowledge they require to improve their health and adopt a healthier lifestyle is critical to the patient experience.
Education is fantastic for establishing trust and authority among your patients. It’s essential during the winter months, for example, that your patients have resources and know about any particular strains of the flu that may be going around.
Provide solutions to their problems and become the primary “go-to” practice for all of their health needs.
10. Empower your Clinical Team
Teamwork makes the dream work, and many Integrative and Functional Medicine practices utilize the skills and talents of Nurse Practitioners, Coaches, Nutritionist, and others. Giving your clinical team the power to initiate treatments provides a sense of ownership and collaboration across all departments.
Nurse practitioners are front and center in patient healthcare, and giving them the power they need to make critical decisions provides a sense of independence for your nurses. It gives your patients greater satisfaction knowing their nurse will care for them.
You may want to establish routine meetings so that your clinical staff can get together and present ideas on how they can improve their patient’s experience.
Providing a quality patient experience is the most powerful growth strategy
By providing fantastic service and satisfying all of the needs of each of your patients, you will attract more ideal patients, help them achieve an optimal state of health, and encourage referrals.
Patient satisfaction is critical, and our hope is that this post provides examples of creative ways to improve that within your practice.
For more information on how MindBody Talent can help with your recruiting efforts for your holistic medicine practice, visit our website today!
