Whenever we talk about performance in healthcare, one of the most important indicators is patient satisfaction. Did your patient find the treatment effective? Did they receive all information pertaining to their health? Was the staff able to help them to make the payment process easier? Did they get information regarding how to use their medical insurance for co-pay?

Every interaction and patient engagement opportunity contributes to the patient experience, which, in turn, influences patient satisfaction. However, patient satisfaction is subjective. What healthcare systems need is a patient feedback system to be able to align experiences with expectations. 

Accurate patient feedback helps in understanding how experiences can be improved. And a good feedback strategy can turn your healthcare business around for good. How? Let's understand.

Patient Loyalty

In today’s hyper-competitive healthcare environment, there is no dearth of options for patients. One bad experience and your patients will switch their healthcare providers because they want nothing but the best. So, to retain patients, you must be able to establish not just trust but loyalty too. And the only way to do that is by offering excellent patient experiences. A satisfied patient is more likely to continue seeking healthcare from you than search for another facility.

Attracting New Patients

In the healthcare industry, word-of-mouth marketing goes a long way. It is the best form of marketing that gives new patients the confidence that their health is in the right hands. And to ensure that your patients speak highly of your healthcare services, it is important to ensure patient satisfaction. Patients who have a positive experience with your healthcare services and the facility would not only recommend you to others but are also likely to write great reviews online, which in turn, would attract more patients. Here’s how you can leverage excellent patient experiences to attract new patients:

• Add positive patient reviews to your website.
• Promote reviews and testimonial videos on various social media platforms.
• Start a blog and feature recovery stories of patients.

Improved Clinical Outcomes

In 77.8% of studies, great patient experience was associated with medical effectiveness. Moreover, some studies demonstrate that better patient experiences can render a lower rate of readmission for the same medical problem. And though the readmission and wellness scenarios may vary for different health issues, it is quite believable that better experiences and relationships with healthcare professionals and staff members can improve clinical outcomes.
For example, the health and recovery of diabetic patients are correlated with their habits and self-care. And positive interactions with the providers can encourage them to adhere to medical advice and adopt a healthy lifestyle.

Improved Patient Retention

There's no shortcut to patient retention. Patients will undoubtedly choose your hospital if you continue to improve patient satisfaction through flawless and positive experiences. 

Here's how a solid experience strategy can help: 

1. Saves the Cost of Patient Acquisition: Acquiring new patients is a lot more expensive than retaining the existing ones. You may attract patients through an insurance contract or advertising and then establish patient and payment records for every new patient. Further interactions with the patients (follow-up calls & reminders), physician’s office (reports of physical), payer (insurance coverage & payment), etc. represent a portion of the investment you make on new patients. You can significantly save on several such unnecessary costs and maintain a consistent revenue inflow if you are able to successfully reduce patient churn.
2. Establishes Patient Loyalty: Gaining the trust of patients is the best thing you can do for your healthcare business. This is because loyal patients would not only prefer your services over others but would also recommend you among friends and family.

Financial Success

Poor patient experience directly translates to losing patients. And in the US, the loss of patients due to unsatisfactory experiences attributes to the loss of over $200,000 in a healthcare practice’s lifetime. And factors such as increased marketing overhead and loss of potential patients contribute to this figure.
According to a Press Ganey study, hospitals with patient satisfaction above 90% received an additional one-third of the existing patient base every year. This means that you can expect more revenue simply by delivering quality experiences, something that requires additional investments in marketing and referral programs.

Additionally, over 32% of people in need of healthcare services say that they check reviews on the website before visiting a facility. This clearly indicates the importance of positive patient experiences to get business from new patients.

Charging More for Better Care

In a study conducted in Voluntary Hospitals of America, it was found that almost 70% of patients were willing to pay extra to consult a qualified physician of their choice. This clearly demonstrates that patients prefer quality healthcare even if that means spending more.
Offering excellent patient experiences helps healthcare facilities to thrive despite the price wars, which means that your facility can stand out despite the competitive market only by providing high-quality care.

Improved Reputation

Healthcare providers with a good reputation enjoy credible market positioning and also attract responsible and quality-conscious patient groups. On the other hand, poor brand image leads to negative reviews, lowered online ranking, consistently decreasing revenue, and is hard to undo. This is the reason healthcare organizations put a high price on reputation management.

By delivering comprehensive care and quality patient experiences, healthcare organizations can solidify patients’ trust in the brand. It allows making patients the brand advocates that drive in other patients through word-of-mouth marketing as well as online reviews.

Zonka Feedback to Measure Patient Experience

Irrespective of the kind of practice, every hospital or healthcare facility thrives on patient satisfaction. And to ensure patient satisfaction, it is important to measure patient experiences against expectations. That's where the role of the Zonka Feedback survey tool comes into play. 

Our patient satisfaction survey tool is designed to help you measure patient experiences across all touchpoints through various metrics, such as:

CSAT: To measure overall patient satisfaction

NPS: To measure the loyalty of patients towards the hospital or healthcare facility

CES: To measure patients' efforts in seeking healthcare and support

With access to our easy-to-use survey builder, you can create surveys from scratch and also use our customizable templates to collect feedback across various channels through mobile, tablet, email, website, mobile app, QR code, etc. Your survey manager can view responses in real-time and manage feedback on a multi-view dashboard to generate insights from actionable reports and analysis and close the gap between patient experience and patient satisfaction.