To ensure your practice grows and prospers, one factor should be your top priority: patient satisfaction. With it, your practice will be able to attract new patients and retain existing ones, but by prioritizing it, you can build a loyal patient base that will help your practice thrive. The most important factor in ensuring practice growth is patient satisfaction.
Patient happiness is more crucial than ever as the healthcare environment keeps evolving for the better. Patients not only have more say in their healthcare decisions these days, but they also bear more financial risk while receiving treatment. Patients’ experiences could be the most important factor in determining the growth and sustainability of a practice, as they are more inclined to compare practices based on healthcare services!
Ensuring Practice Growth through Patient Satisfaction
Practices are now required by metrics such as the HCAHPS survey to record patient experience. However, research shows that providing the best possible patient experience benefits practices financially over the long term and is not merely a compliance necessity.
In a recent study, Urgent RCM postulated a direct correlation between practice expansion and patient satisfaction. We examined patient reviews for thirty New York City medical clinics to find patterns in patient expectations. For three review score brackets—2.0 to 2.9, 3.0 to 3.9, and 4.0 to 5.0—we computed the increase in patient volume. Remarkably, it was discovered that practitioners with the most significant average review score often have a 42% higher patient base growth rate than those with the lowest score!
Patient-to-Doctor Complaining
The totality of a patient’s contact with every aspect of care a clinic provides is their overall patient experience. Approximately 35.1% of complaints about over 88,000 patient complaints were about the management of healthcare organizations, followed by complaints about patient-staff relationships at 29.1% and clinical treatment quality at 33.7%, according to a 2014 research study1.
According to a Johns Hopkins study, the most common concerns from patients are as follows:
The totality of a patient’s contacts with every aspect of care provided by a clinic is their overall patient experience. Approximately 35.1% of complaints about over 88,000 patient complaints were about the management of healthcare organizations, followed by complaints about patient-staff relationships at 29.1% and clinical treatment quality at 33.7%, according to a 2014 research study.
- Lack of clear communication
- Not being updated on important administrative information
- Not being educated and updated on medical condition
- Lack of professionalism from practice staff
- Feeling unengaged
Experience of Patients in Collections
Patient experience is crucial, especially during collections, as it manages multiple possible practice challenges:
- Readmission rates are reduced when patients have a positive experience.
- Satisfied patients are far less likely to decide not to receive therapy.
- Reimbursements decrease when patients have a terrible experience.
- Patients who are not happy are more inclined to move providers.
Patient Experience’s Importance in Healthcare Collections
Best Practices
Firstly, it’s just good practice to ensure patients have a great experience during the collection process. When health systems guarantee integrated, engaged treatment and anticipate and meet patients’ demands, they might be regarded as morally righteous and forward-thinking. The main goal of any moral provider should be to maintain a practice that offers a high-quality patient experience during collection.
Advancements in Finance
Due to technological advancements and state and federal regulations, patients are primarily responsible for paying for their healthcare expenses rather than insurance. Patient liabilities are constantly increasing, exacerbating problems like difficult-to-understand billing specifications, a high rate of claim denials, and, eventually, low profitability. The best strategy to prevent collection delays and inconsistencies is simplifying the patient’s interaction with the collecting process.
Openness to Millennials
Interestingly, new research has also revealed that millennials have different healthcare expectations than previous generations. This suggests that patient experience techniques from the past may be entirely out of date. 65% of patients—41% of whom are millennials—said that cost transparency is essential to their level of satisfaction overall. A concerning 77% of people worry that healthcare expenditures are “unpredictable,” which directly impacts how much better patient care is required.
Patient Loyalty
There is no denying that convoluted, sluggish, or ambiguous collection procedures affect patient loyalty. Patients who prefer providers with a transparent method are said to be over 70% of the total. Patients now have many options due to the industry’s growing rivalry, and they are likely to switch if their preferences still need to be met, leading to disappointing encounters.
Benefits of Practice
Healthcare practitioners must remember that providing value-based, patient-centered treatment that raises patient satisfaction with collection benefits the patient and the practice. Happier customers generate higher earnings due to decreased expenses and higher return rates. This creates even more foundation for a successful collection procedure.
Increasing Patient Satisfaction in Collections
Optimizing the Experience of Patients in Collections: To accommodate the preferences of contemporary patients, collections might be simplified in several ways:
Establishing a self-service culture: Self-services are currently being found to assist practices in the collection process. Self-service check-in and pre-visit form completion are recommended to guarantee that current insurance information is recorded and unpaid accounts are settled.
Sufficient Communication: Ineffective communication is frequently the root cause of unsatisfactory patient experiences during collections. It is imperative to give patients cost transparency and promptly notify them about the expiration of their benefits.
Claims Scrubbing: Preventatively detecting and correcting billing errors is beneficial. This improves the communication puzzle overall, speeds up and streamlines the collection process, and decreases denials.
Providers must employ technology and collection specialists to improve patient satisfaction and benefit all parties involved as healthcare financials become more complex. This is because many claims require manual processing.