Why it’s crucial to evaluate a facility from an aesthetics perspective
Improving each patient’s experience could save a healthcare organization millions of dollars in avoidable patient leakage.
According to a 2022 report from ABOUT Healthcare, 65 percent of healthcare executives stated patient leakage — defined as patients leaving their health system’s network of care — blocked practices from reaching their financial goals.
This statistic is a stark example of the damage done by the decades-long struggle across the healthcare industry to bridge the gap between quality care delivery and patient experience.
As health systems and specialty providers turn to technology to enable their next step toward innovation, it's crucial for healthcare leaders to understand and leverage these tools. The era of technological advancement presents a unique opportunity for healthcare to redefine patient experience. One factor remains the same — cultivating positive relationships with patients is integral to the success of all healthcare organizations.
A positive patient experience is foundational to building trust, confidence and rapport, between patients, caregivers and healthcare providers. This trust is not just a byproduct, but a responsibility that healthcare executives must actively work to maintain. Creating a comfortable, low-stress environment can alleviate undue healthcare-related anxiety, enabling patients to focus on their care and build trust with the provider.
Like any other business, a negative experience can be extremely costly for patients and health systems. In fact, the average hospital loses $200 million to $500 million, or 10 percent to 30 percent of its revenue per year, because of patient leakage. This loss affects the organization's financial health and also erodes patient trust in the healthcare system.
Important lessons that consistently seek and build positive experiences come from an often-overlooked niche of healthcare — the aesthetics industry. Aesthetics and medspa practices, often considered “retail medicine” because of the general lack of payer involvement, offer valuable insights as the broader healthcare industry becomes more consumer-focused and patients assume more responsibility for the cost of care.
As a result, traditional health systems can learn from retail medicine’s pursuit of creating the gold standard of patient experience. Retail medical practices live and die based on their ability to “wow” patients, and this begins with the first “hello.”
Why does patient experience matter?
Achieving a positive patient experience has a direct, beneficial impact on the care experience for all stakeholders.
According to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), a positive patient experience can correlate to better health outcomes. When patients feel valued, seen and supported, they are more likely to recommend the healthcare facility and physician to others. Retaining existing patients and converting their referrals to new clients greatly impacts your bottom line. In fact, acquiring a new patient is six to seven times more expensive than retaining an existing one.
An organization must implement strategies that create the best possible experience to promote patient loyalty. Ideally, patients will return and share positive experiences with friends and family. Happy patients return for other services and even recruit patients on an organization’s behalf, while unhappy patients can hinder the success of an organization. Delivering a high-level experience the first time is critical.
Each aspect of the patient experience — online interaction with the facility, scheduling the first appointment, engaging office staff during check-in, completing paperwork, conducting the appointment, handling billing — is an opportunity to deliver exceptional customer service. Small tweaks to the process, such as assessing where technology can improve efficiency, could save time and money spent on patient leakage and acquiring new patients.
Knowing an audience makes a big difference
Healthcare leaders often assume that staff intuitively know what is needed to deliver white-glove customer service. However, creating the best experience requires research, strategy and training.
Patients need to feel valued during every step of the process, but this varies across geographic areas, personalities and generations. Generational characteristics serve as helpful qualifiers to understand patient experience preferences based on life stage and inform cultural and social connections that build trust.
The following tips are crucial to enhancing patient experience in a facility.
Soft skills are foundational to success. Staff training on interpersonal skills goes a long way. For many people, soft skills such as greeting patients, engaging in conversation and resolving conflict can be unnatural and difficult to master. Educating staff on their position and how to interact with patients sets a clear standard for what is expected and needed to deliver an exceptional experience.
Clear communication keeps everyone on track. Conflict resolution is challenging. In a customer service role, it is often difficult to remain calm and provide top-notch service when an unhappy customer complains. Scripting is a valuable tool to help staff handle difficult phone calls or encounters while remaining professional. A simple script provides a framework to resolve conflict and reassure patients in any situation.
Know the audience. Consider patient needs and desires regarding the services your practice provides. What problems are you helping solve, and are there additional needs you can anticipate to address preferences proactively?
Tailor the experience to your audience and identify ways your practice can connect with them. For example, knowing there is a market of millennial mothers who want services to support recovery from having children informs an approach from the beginning. Incorporating cultural preferences unique to a patient population into the experience helps patients feel prioritized and communicates a desire to meet their needs, resulting in connection, trust and increased loyalty.
A patient-centric approach builds trust. Make intentional decisions that keep patients in mind throughout the process. Patient rapport and trust are essential for fostering long-term, mutually beneficial relationships.
Each detail, from an organization’s website to the waiting room, offers an opportunity for a user-friendly, welcoming experience. Consider how many clicks it takes for patients to get information or the steps required to book an appointment or pay a bill. These areas can either improve or complicate the experience, drawing patients into your doors or turning them away.
Walk through the entire process as if a new patient is encountering your facility for the first time, from initial research to billing. This will help highlight the pain points faced by patients. From here, identify areas of friction and develop a strategy to mitigate them.
Positive patient experience is core to an organization’s future. Patient experience is an essential pillar of patient-centered care. Healthcare leaders could save their facilities millions of dollars in patient leakage by delivering a stellar experience the first time. With proper training, empathy, user-friendly technology, integrated systems and a warm, welcoming atmosphere, health systems create an experience that keeps patients coming back for years to come.
Robin Ntoh is vice president of aesthetics for Nextech.