Patients tend to refer to their last experience in the doctor’s office when considering the concept of patient satisfaction.
In today’s digital world, the concept of patient satisfaction has transformed. The online interaction and experience your patients have with your practice is now part of creating an optimal patient satisfaction.
Is your website convenient for online visitors? Are your patients going to receive the same experience online as they would if they showed up in the office? Is the information your patients seek accessible and can they easily access the patient portal?
To help you ensure your practice creates the best patient satisfaction through online interactions, here are some tips.
Maintaining a user-friendly website is key to ensure your patients are satisfied online. Make navigation easy for them by highlighting the most frequently asked general questions on your page. This strategy allows your patients to educate themselves on the practice and offers them answers to questions easily rather than forcing them to have to call your office. Also, offer support button options and make them clear and easy to find. If you optimize your site for user-friendliness, when your patient is having trouble, they can simply click on the support button to receive immediate assistance.
Another convenient way to offer the best experience to your online patients is to provide online scheduling. Online scheduling gives those busy parents or individuals the freedom to choose the time, date and doctor to see at their convenience. Giving your patients the opportunity to setup appointments online also saves your front desk staff some extra time too. It also allows the patient to cancel and/or reschedule when things come up unexpectedly. By offering online scheduling, it provides the ultimate satisfaction experience to both new and returning patients.
Help your practice’s patients by offering the same paperwork online as you would in the office. This will help cut down patient waiting times and allow your doctors to see patients more quickly. This avoids the chaos of patients rushing to fill out paperwork just minutes before their scheduled appointment while also helping the staff enter their information into the computer faster.
While these steps are not necessary in ensuring that your patients have the best experience, they certainly do not hurt! There are many factors that contribute to a patient having an excellent patient experience and these tips above are just a few. Taking the steps to improve your practice’s patient experience outcomes will not only help you with your retention rate but also give you new insight to help your practice grow in areas that you might have missed before!