Social media and the ability to connect with others worldwide might make you think that patients aren’t as bothered by longer wait times. Surely with all of the tablets and smartphones people have these days, they would be content spending time using those until they can meet with a medical professional, right? Well, this is actually not the case, and longer wait times for patients are still a problem for medical practices. It may be indicative of poor practice management. While patients should expect some wait, it shouldn’t be too long. In addition, you should take some time to get your patients more engaged and improve their experience at your facility, but how is this done? Here is what you can do to raise patient engagement for your medical practice.
Comfort
This point is one that can get overlooked, but patients will remember the comforts provided to them after they have left. It doesn’t take too much to make a patient feel more comfortable. All it takes is a few magazines for people to read, free Wi-Fi access they can use, a television for them to watch, and perhaps a little coffee or tea for them to enjoy. It’s these small details that can really make a statement with your patients.
Education
Patients can get busy, so it could be a good idea to raise patient engagement by offering them brochures and pamphlets going over ways they can care for themselves if they have particular conditions. Doing this helps keep your patients educated while encouraging them to demonstrate more healthy behavior in the future.
Patient Information
This is another aspect of patient engagement that can easily get overlooked, but there should be heavy emphasis placed on it. Think about the number of times that you didn’t have the right information after submitting medical claims or after patients have already left your office.
It’s not uncommon for patients to change their phone numbers or addresses at some point, so you want to update pieces of information like this, as well as update their email address and insurance information. To further raise patient engagement, you can let them review their information and update it accordingly.
Patient Feedback
It’s not always fun to hear criticism from patients, but its valuable information to have. This is why your medical practice should offer surveys or some other means of letting them provide feedback to you. Just be sure that you’re responsive to feedback. Otherwise, you can drive patients away.
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