Disclaimer: This blog article was written by an AdvancedMD partner. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of AdvancedMD.
Every medical practice is primarily built on the quality of patient care they provide and their retention of existing patient volume. That is why it’s so important for a healthcare practice to ensure established patients follow up for their medical needs without switching over to a different provider or practice.
Why it matters
The most important aspect of growth of any healthcare practice is patient engagement and satisfaction. Patients usually have feedback and expectations of the care and hospitality they receive during their visits. By implementing their suggestions, medical practices can enhance the potential to retain established patients for a longer period.
What do patients usually expect? They look for a more approachable and caring provider who can ensure their problems are addressed. When it comes to healthcare, it is the provider’s responsibility to communicate well with their patients and inform them of their health status and recuperation strategies. This allows patients to make appropriate decisions for their physical wellbeing.
Proactive patient engagement
Patient engagement involves clinical practitioners proactively working with their patients and helping them to have a clear understanding of their physical condition and guide them through the process of making decisions to bring about solutions for their wellness and good health. This allows patients to handle their own healthcare needs to a larger extent, with proper guidance and support, thereby enhancing positive results.
Achieving higher positive recuperation rates
It’s a known fact that patients who have more clarity about their physical status and maintain regular communication with their physicians have higher chances of positive recuperation. So, it is more than just a nice practice for healthcare providers to incorporate patient engagement and patient feedback into their day-to-day processes—it’s a necessity.
Let’s discuss 6 ways patient engagement can help your patients & your practice:
1. Effective patient recuperation
As a primary responsibility of a healthcare provider, every practitioner must ensure proper recovery of their patients and bring about positive outcomes. Proactive engagement with patients can help them accomplish the goals. Patient engagement involves resolution of patient concerns before their physical condition deteriorates further or becomes severe and uncontrollable, or in some cases, terminal. It also helps in promoting effective collaboration between the patient and the medical practice. Patients can then receive clear knowledge and effective ideas to manage their overall health, thereby, positively overcoming their current physical condition.
2. Competitive efficacy
As the healthcare industry transforms, patients have become the cornerstone of productivity and profitability for every healthcare practitioner. This means that patients are crucial to their medical practice’s efficiency. Patients playing an active role when receiving treatments can help achieve this efficiency while they have complete access to necessary medical information. As this happens, personalized services offered by various healthcare practices are most likely to be compared based on preference, engagement, and positive outcomes expected. This helps to increase competitiveness within the healthcare sector, thereby encouraging positive upgrades and unique functionalities.
3. Reduced patient visits
Patient engagement helps to establish a streamlined communication approach between the provider and the patient. It ensures a deeper understanding of necessary measures, care options, and such. Medical practices make sure that even the smallest detail isn’t left out while carrying out their regular patient care process. This means that the patient covers mostly all the necessary details on his/her health status, and recovery needs in a lesser number of visits when compared to the number of encounters without any basic understanding of why they are undergoing the treatment.
4. Reduced number of cancellations
Cancellation of doctor’s appointments by patients is a very common issue that prevails in the healthcare sector. The reasons behind this could be multitude but one most common reason could be due to a conflict of timings between the patient and provider availability. However, this can be overcome with patient engagement and better accessibility to any required information about the patient’s healthcare needs. Patients are thus empowered to book their appointments, access medical history and care plans, and fix their own time for encounters according to their convenience and physician availability. This reduces the cases of no-shows and appointment cancellations to a greater level and increases medical productivity. Use of technology on this front greatly boosts patient access levels to provider schedules as well, helping patients choose appointments accordingly.
5. Build branding for practice
As a healthcare provider, you must be precise in all activities. When patients are satisfied with the level of integrity and authenticity that you possess, they will be very pleased with the quality of services rendered. As a result, they will share their positive experiences with their family and friends. This is only possible through a streamlined patient engagement that incorporates diligent communication and support, making them a focal point for decision-making.
6. Increased Revenue
The patient’s enthusiastic approach to have clarity over his/her health status resulting from the enhanced experience helps in improving patient retention rates, improving your practice’s revenue, and thereby profitability.
Conclusion
To achieve successful patient engagement, it is imperative to follow a definite strategy that works well for your organization. Using the right set of tools to strengthen patient engagement helps in providing a platform to patients where they can access necessary medical information, effectively communicate, and follow up with the medical practitioner either face-to-face or virtually.
