PATIENT EXPERIENCE

PX Outlook for 2024: Why Patient Survey Software is Going to Be Vital

February 4, 2021
7:00 pm

Free Download: Enhance your Patient Experience program by using these major PX trends. Increase Patient Satisfaction. Reduce Churn.

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Voxco · Patient Experience Outlook For 2021

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Patient Experience has seen a transformative 2020. The pandemic tested the very limits of what healthcare providers could offer, and has set the tone for what one can expect going forward.

The patient survey software will play a key role as healthcare organizations constantly strive to improve patient outcomes, engagement, and satisfaction. There is an increasing need to make the processes more efficient and take in patient feedback at regular intervals.

Patient satisfaction and retention are the need of the hour, as an increase in customer retention rates by 5% increases profits anywhere between 25% to 95%.

2024 looks more of the same, with a few caveats. Here’s a preview of the challenges and opportunities that healthcare providers may come across in the year ahead.

What is patient experience?

Patient experience refers to the overall interaction a patient has with a healthcare organization. It is the sum of their satisfaction and perception regarding their healthcare encounters. It also includes quality of care, communication with care providers, access to services, coordination of care, and the physical environment.

How to measure patient experience?

Measuring patient experience allows you to understand areas of improvement and the strengths and weaknesses of the healthcare system.

One popular method of evaluating PX is HCAHPS surveys, aka Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems surveys. HCAHPS surveys ask patients to rate their level of satisfaction across various aspects of healthcare.

Another widely used method is by using patient survey software to create surveys for various interactions and touchpoints across the patient journey. The software allows you to customize the survey enabling you to gather relevant data on patient experience. This helps you gather nuanced data on every critical touchpoint so you can enhance the quality of care for each patient.

Read how Voxco helped D.G. Solution grow their business by 4x in a single year!

Why is Patient Survey Software important?

Use patient survey software to learn more than what CAHPS scores tell you. Here we will see four factors that contribute to the importance of healthcare market research.

1. CAHPS makes up the largest portion of star ratings

CAHPS scores now represent 32% of the overall weightage for STAR ratings in 2021. CAHPS surveys directly gauge how customers feel about their experience with healthcare organizations, not just their satisfaction. Improving CAHPS scores is likely to improve performance in other surveys like HEDIS as well.

So how can healthcare organizations improve their performance in these surveys?

Keeping in mind that these ratings take into account how customers feel about your services, you should focus on providing effortless experiences at every touchpoint.

Healthcare facilities need to deliver on promises to their customers and get feedback on the same. Be it in terms of pricing, facilities, post-op care or finance – you must ensure the experience is as seamless as possible. Patient survey software can help you evaluate these aspects of patient experience and identify areas of improvement.

2. Healthcare Organizations cannot simply stop at fulfilling STAR requirements

Although STAR ratings need to be a priority, PX requires more than just checking off boxes. CAHPS, HEDIS, and HOS surveys should be augmented by a “patient first” approach in your organization. Every employee needs to adopt a patient-centric mindset, with the aim not just being customer satisfaction but customer delight.

As Patient Experience is still in a somewhat nascent stage, healthcare organizations have the time to adapt to PX-focused operations or risk losing their business to newcomers who adopt a PX focused approach from the outset.

3. Telehealth Patient Experience

As telehealth adoption rates soar – both for patients and providers, healthcare organizations need to chart out a plan to ensure that their patient experience program covers their telehealth portals.

You need to ensure the widespread availability of your telehealth services and also make sure that your target population is well aware of your offerings: 59% of Gen Y patients say that they would switch doctors for one with better online access.

Consider your target audience – it is possible that a significant number of your telehealth users (the elderly, in particular) may be new to such a service. This puts them at grave risk of data theft, and being manipulated by cybercriminals.

Patient data is sacrosanct, and healthcare providers need to adopt sophisticated identity management and security solutions for their services. Your patient survey software needs to permeate this sense of security across all your digital channels.

4. On-premises visits and virtual care need to be seamlessly interconnected

Virtual care is expected to cover a large percentage of patient interactions in the coming year, and it’s probable that many telehealth sessions will translate into onsite visits at your facility. CX teams at your organization need to ensure that both these avenues seamlessly lead to one another.

There may be teething issues, but taking feedback sincerely will keep engagement levels high at key touchpoints. Automating certain processes (billing, scheduling follow-ups etc.) should help with patient satisfaction.

Free Guide On PX:

Enhance your Patient Experience program by using these major PX trends.

Increase patient satisfaction. Reduce churn.

Achieve excellence in PX in 2024 with Patient Experience Software

Imbibing a holistic patient-first approach in healthcare organizations requires setting up a comprehensive patient experience program that tracks customer and employee feedback at multiple touchpoints.

Keeping the principles listed below(they can be tailored to suit your organization) as the bedrock of your Patient Experience program will ensure your PX improvements translate into growth.

01. Listen using healthcare survey software:

Healthcare organizations need to identify key customer listening posts across all channels. Feedback has to be solicited as well as unsolicited and needs to be sought constantly.

A robust patient survey software should offer the following channels:

1. Online:

Online survey tools enable you to send surveys via emails, SMS, or web pop-ups. Social media is also a valuable channel to glean insights and propagate surveys.

2. On-premises or mobile-offline:

Waiting rooms and lounges are excellent locations for insights. You could ask patients to fill out feedback forms (could be on a tablet that you provide) and questionnaires while they’re waiting. You can even incentivize respondents (perhaps with a discount code at your facility’s cafeteria!).

3. Telephonic:

CATI or IVR surveys are effective tools at gleaning insights from the less tech-savvy segment of your target audience.

02. Interpret or analyze using data analysis tools

The Customer and Employee Experience teams at your organization need to analyze the feedback to glean actionable insights and make them accessible to employees across the organization. Analysts must use this feedback to identify how customers may act in the future.

03. Act using data visualization tools

Once VoC and VoC data have been analyzed, Healthcare organizations need to identify key pain points and work on addressing them. This can include responding to individual customer complaints or implementing system-wide changes to improve customer and employee experience.

04. Monitor with dashboard

After implementing changes and acting on customer concerns, CX and EX teams need to monitor results and then quantify improvements (NPS®, CSAT, etc.).

These details can help see the impact of Patient Experience programs within one’s organization and can be used to enact further changes, as it would be done keeping the Voice of the employee as well as the patient in mind.

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Deliver personalized care through Patient Survey Software

Healthcare is an intimate subject for most people, and customers respond positively to personalized care. The best source of data for personalized services is the patients themselves. There are many insights to be evaluated from data collected via analytics and from feedback collected via patient experience surveys.

These insights are the key to crafting better experiences for the patient and for improving patient engagement levels. Engagement with customers in the healthcare domain is critical for improving the overall status of healthcare in a community.

More knowledgeable patients = healthier patients, and better, more frequent data gathering is key to understanding overall patient engagement levels. Better patient engagement translates to an improved patient experience.

Patient survey software can be a useful tool for communicating with your patients. “Did you know?” type questions can help pass on useful healthcare information to your respondents.

Providing more personalized care to your patients is heavily dependent on your physicians and other healthcare staff. Physician burnout is a major roadblock when it comes to improving the overall healthcare experience at your organization.

Tending to EHRs is a major grievance for most doctors, with 54% of Doctors saying that EHRs decrease professional satisfaction. Clearly, there is a need to adopt a data-driven and automated approach to ensure better PX and engagement levels.

Patient survey software allows you to gather data and identify gaps in care delivered. It offers you a platform to gather honest and reliable data on how patients perceive your healthcare organization. Leverage Voxco’s healthcare survey software to capture data across multiple channels and listen to the voice of customers.

Voxco is trusted by Top 50 Market Research firms, Global Brands & Universities in 40 countries. Voxco offers full omnichannel capability including CATI, Predictive Dialler, Online surveys, offline CAPI, and Panel Management.

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Sidhant

Sidhant Shori is a Content Marketer at Voxco. He's got a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science Engineering and leverages his interest in market trends as well as his experience in creating content. He's also a Sci-Fi geek and enjoys video games and movies and also likes reading thrillers.

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