Patient Satisfaction is an indicator of patient's happiness with the treatment and the services provided in the hospital or a healthcare center. With Patient Satisfaction, you can easily know the extent of patient's happiness with their healthcare and overall experience at the hospital. When you are running a hospital or a clinic, it is necessary that your patients are satisfied with the services if you wish to establish a lasting relationship with your patients.

According to a study conducted by Accenture, 51% of patients will change their healthcare provider for great Customer Experience.

A satisfied patient will not only choose your hospital for himself and his family members in the future in case of a need of health care services, but he will also suggest your hospital to his friends and known ones for any treatment.

Whereas, an unsatisfied patient will neither maintain his relationship with the hospital nor suggest anybody. In fact, an excessively dissatisfied patient will make all his effort to discourage his known ones from choosing your hospital or clinic for any treatment.

Dissatisfied patients spread a bad word of mouth more actively than the satisfied patients spreading good word of mouth.

Therefore, Patient Satisfaction carries utmost importance for building a strong goodwill of your hospital or a healthcare center.

Ways to Ensure Patient Satisfaction in your Hospital or Clinic

If you want to make sure that the patients in your hospital or clinic get satisfied with your services, you have to take active part to safeguard the interests of the patients and provide them world class services. Here are some ways and best practices with the help of which you can maximize Patient Satisfaction with the care you provide at your hospital or clinic.

These ways can help you to maximize the Patient Satisfaction and thus positively impact the goodwill of your hospital or clinic. Lets us review how.

1. Make Processes Simple

When a patient approaches a hospital or a clinic, he is already struggling with his own health problems. And above that if he has to go through complex and lengthy processes in the hospital, it further makes his situation troublesome. So, if you want to satisfy your patients, first step is to make all the processes simpler for them.

Things should be organized in such a way that the patients or their family members do not have to face long queues or long waiting time. Services should be readily available and every effort should be made to make the processes smooth for them.

2. Educate the Staff

When you are making a vision to satisfy the patients and develop a lasting relationship with them, it is crucial to educate all the staff first about your vision so that the staff works well to achieve this common organizational objective of patient satisfaction.

Motivate your staff to work for the betterment of the patients and providing them the best services which will eventually help your hospital to grow in terms of business and goodwill, and that will ultimately benefit all the staff too.

3. Improve services and ensure best practices

In order to maximize Patient Satisfaction, it is necessary to serve them in the best possible ways. Remember that the patients are very much aware about certain medical aspects too and it is essential to have a patient-friendly approach and follow the best practices in your hospital. This will spread a good word of mouth and take the goodwill of the hospital to high levels.

Moreover, the doctors and the other hospital staff should be supportive for the patients and the patients must feel respected and comfortable enough which have a positive effect on their health as well as their perspective about the hospital. They should be provided superior quality services and clean atmosphere.

4. Collect Patient Feedback

To maximize Patient Satisfaction, collecting Patient Feedback is a prerequisite. When you gather Patient Feedback, you get to know the real perspective of the patients what they feel about the experience they had at your hospital.

Taking timely feedback from the patients will enable you to have a real insight about the procedures and processes going on in your hospital. You can obtain feedback by using a Patient Feedback Software. You can take Patient Feedback via different ways of taking survey.

• You can send survey emails and SMS to the inpatients post discharge from the hospital.
• You can set up tablets in the areas like clinic reception or waiting area to get real-time feedback from the patients post appointment.
• You can ask Patient Satisfaction survey questions to improve the Patient Experience.

5. Take required actions based on feedback

Merely taking feedback will not serve the purpose of Customer Satisfaction unless appropriate actions for improvement are not taken. In order to fasten this process, you can take certain steps like:

• Setting up instant email and SMS alerts for feedback responses and negative feedback so that you get notified in real-time and are able to take immediate corrective actions.
• Always take timely action wherever it requires improvement and inform the patients about the actions taken so that they feel that their opinion makes a difference.

6. Follow up with the patients

Following up with the patients after they have got discharged is as important as asking for feedback. This is a very good gesture to express your genuine concern for their health. Moreover, you get the opportunity to get to know more regarding their experience with your hospital and health care services.

This will also help to develop a long-term relationship with the customer and will also foster Patient Satisfaction. In addition to this, this will help you in closing the feedback loop.

In this way, you can ensure that the patients are satisfied with the services provided at your hospital or health care center.

Learn more about the Patient Satisfaction

• Best Ways to Use Patient Surveys

• Patient Satisfaction Survey Questions You Need to Ask to Improve the Patient Experience

• Difference between Patient Satisfaction and Patient Experience

• How to Measure Patient Satisfaction Using Patient Surveys?

• Growing Importance of Patient Surveys