For a long time, your healthcare facility has been committed to providing exceptional services to its patients. Your facility always uses the most innovative medical advances, and your staff is knowledgeable and experienced. While your hospital is committed to offering the best healthcare services, there still may be one missing piece to complete the patient satisfaction puzzle: patient engagement.
Patient engagement aims to promote positive behavior in patients and encourage them to be involved in their own care to improve health outcomes, achieve lower costs, and drive better patient care.
Advantages of patient engagement
- It reduces no-shows, which helps to boost revenue.
- Engaging and collaborating with patients in the decision-making process helps healthcare providers to make better decisions.
- It allows physicians to treat patients in the most effective way possible. This makes the treatment more cost and time-efficient.
- It increases the patient’s understanding and knowledge of their healthcare needs.
Here are some effective methods that healthcare providers can use to achieve better patient engagement.
1. Appointment reminders
Appointment reminders are an effective way to achieve patient engagement. They help to reduce missed appointments, provide useful pre-appointment information, and minimize no-shows, which helps to increase revenue.
2. Provide information
A lot of people look for health and medical information online. There is a high likelihood that your patients are also doing so. Maybe they already trust you, but you can boost your credibility by making your healthcare facility a resource for health guidance. Make information available to patients outside their visits – through blogs, videos, and guides, among other content avenues.
Make sure your website is mobile compatible to make it easy for patients to use their phones to browse the web to find information.
3. Collaborate with patients
Collaborate with patients on their care plan by having an open and honest discussion. This is an excellent way to increase patient engagement. Taking your patient’s feedback to heart while developing their care plan increases the chances of the patient seeing it through.
4. Personalized interactions
From customized Facebook ads to Netflix suggestions, consumers in this modern world are becoming more and more used to personalized experiences. In the modern market, consumers expect all types of businesses to understand their wants and needs. This is particularly so in the healthcare industry where the services offered are deeply personal. Also, a hospital is one of the most stress-inducing places a person can visit, and personalization is a great way to improve their comfort.
Use a patient journey map to create personalized engagement. Understanding the personal attributes of a patient helps you to have the right message at the right time.
5. Encourage feedback
Providing information to patients is important, but patient feedback is equally important. Provide channels where patients can make comments about their experience. You may ask the patients directly, or you can administer surveys by mail or phone. Use that feedback to improve your services.
Endnote
The above practices will not only help your hospital achieve patient engagement but will also improve patient experience and overall communication. Ultimately, improved patient engagement will help to increase your revenue. Improve your patient engagement today for your best results yet.