It’s not what you do that counts, but how you do it. Since 2013, healthcare providers have been required to reduce readmission rates through improved health of their patients.
A study by Accenture shows that the more time practitioners spend with patients, the better their response to both treatment and advice. It’s challenging for busy providers to give patients the attention they need, but these tips could boost your engagement.
#1: Implement Electronic Communications
Electronic communication reduces resources needed to keep in touch with patients. Some ways providers implement this include:
- Secure messaging options: This also helps achieve Meaningful Use compliance, which requires providers to perform more than 5 percent of patient communications via messaging.
- Scheduling appointments: Programs such as Patient Prompt take the pain out of efforts to call for a consultation during hours when staff are busy and patients may be at work.
- Medication reminders: Treatment non-adherence is a huge problem in the U.S., with evidence that it causes multiple deaths and costs over $200 billion each year. Efforts to send patients automated reminders to take medication have delivered an improvement of 31.4 percent.
The ability to review electronic health records enables consumers to access care recommendations independently, with evidence showing a 16 percent increase in the use of preventive services as a result.
#2: Be Transparent
With the ongoing changes to insurance, consumers are shouldering higher medical costs themselves. The more transparent your billing, the better patients will understand what they are paying for. This generates understanding and helps build trust. Some providers are working to offer patient discounts, which will help consumers believe they have their best interests at heart.
#3: Provide Service Excellence
Keeping healthcare consumers loyal depends on offering value in exchange for the patient’s time, money or trust. To deliver excellence, implement strategies such as:
- Happy, enthusiastic employees. The team makes or breaks consumer experience, so keep your employees motivated and positive. Whether it’s training, mapping career paths, or incentives based on performance, determine their individual needs and find a way to respond to them.
- Optimizing services. To take care of consumers in the most efficient way, it’s important to focus on specialty areas, rather than trying to be all things to all patients.
Few things beat having patients believe you hold their lives and wellbeing in your hands, but often your results are only as good as the patient’s level of belief in you.
For more information on how to engage your audience and keep them loyal, Wax Custom Communications at 305-350-5700 or visit waxcom.com.
