Patient satisfaction is a critical business issue for today’s health care organizations. Over the years, the marketplace has become much more competitive and consumers are demanding ever-higher levels of service. Health care organizations that fail to respond to this new reality face declining patient populations and financial instability. As a result, health care executives have come to recognize the correlation between improved patient satisfaction and organizational performance.
To ensure that patient satisfaction is a number-one priority, health care employees need to:
In addition, health care leaders need to:
Service Plus® Health Care: Building Patient Loyalty -- Helps care providers and support staff build the skills and knowledge they need to provide truly exceptional patient service, leading to patients who exhibit the three R’s of loyalty – return, refer, and relate.
While the patient experience is influenced by myriad factors, many of which are impossible for a health care organization to adjust for a specific patient, there are many common amenities and staff behaviors over which hospitals do wield great control, and which are products of a patient-focused mindset. Patients want to stay in safe, pleasant surroundings, they want to be treated with courtesy and respect and, above all, they want to feel as if their care is of the utmost importance to the health care organization. In satisfying these patient needs, a health care organization’s culture, systematic processes, departmental interaction, and individual and collective interpersonal behaviors play crucial roles. Understanding and addressing these factors is the
first step toward experiencing positive results in any patient satisfaction program.