Guide to patient satisfaction in 2023

 In this guide to patient satisfaction, we’ll take a look at some of the most common pain points for patients and how you can address them. Clients are more demanding than ever as their financial burden increases, and concerns over the spread of diseases such as COVID-19 make patients reluctant to go to a medical provider, even for urgent care. So, the more your practice can do to ease the minds of patients and keep interactions positive, the better patient satisfaction and outcomes will be.

You can prevent your loyal patients from changing service providers by eliminating common pain points. By addressing the following issues, you can provide convenient, seamless, and quality medical care that delights your clients:

• Billing concerns
• Inefficient appointment setting
• Lack of automation for new patient registration
• Poor communications of diagnostic, treatment, and medication information

Let’s start with some high-level goals.

High-Level Goals to Improve Patient Satisfaction

As you formulate a plan to tackle each of the challenges below, keep the following high-level goals in mind:

• Strive to improve access to care and meet patients online for critical communication.
• Listen to what your patients tell you when diagnosing problems with satisfaction at your practice, and conduct regular customer satisfaction surveys to keep on top of your client’s changing needs.
• Talk to your healthcare professionals to find out what they need to access information and streamline the treatment process.
• Adopt technology, such as OmniMD, that allows your team to create an effective virtual experience during treatment, appointment setting, follow-up care, and other touchpoints.
• Offer training for medical professionals new to virtual communication.
• Place your patient at the center of your business and work everything us around them.

Billing Concerns and Solutions

Efficient billing practices help you enter claims to payers quickly for a faster revenue turnaround. They also make life easier for patients, who ultimately want to know how much the service will cost. Too often, patients are unable to get a straight answer regarding billing prior to a visit. In many ways, this is driven by unknown factors that come up during an examination. However, there are still several things you can do to address billing concerns.

To improve patient satisfaction when it comes to billing, consider the following suggestions:

• Adopt technology that includes a patient portal. This technology gives patients access to their information, sends appointment reminders, and allows you to communicate with clients efficiently. By including an FAQ section and glossary describing billing codes, you can help them understand the billing without calling your office.
• Add a chat feature to make it easy for patients to ask questions about their procedures. Patients often have questions about their financial responsibility since bills typically contain multiple payment amounts. Giving them a lifeline as they examine the bill can help your patients remain calm and cool while working to understand the billing process.
• Train your billing team to promptly answer customer questions and politely address complaints.
• When it comes right down to it, patients tend to be more trusting of medical procedures than the billing process. You can maintain consistent pricing and educate each patient on the cost of service while they’re still in the office. This approach avoids misunderstandings and hard feelings.

OmniMD Medical Billing Software and Medical Billing Services offer a comprehensive solution that makes it easy to verify insurance eligibility, simplify your billing template, send bills and accept payments electronically, and improve your patient satisfaction rates through an effective billing process.

Patients also need understanding and better communication when it comes to appointment scheduling, discussed in the next section.

Appointment Scheduling Pain Points and Solutions

Taking an appointment may seem simple. However, there are several factors that make the process complicated. It only takes one emergency visit to derail appointments for the rest of the day for one or more providers. With the right scheduling software, you can set better expectations for wait times and move things around more easily when necessary.

If your front desk still uses an appointment book to manage appointments, you’re missing out on the functionality of automated appointment setting software.

Here are a few questions to help you determine whether your appointment setting technology meets the needs of your front desk team and patients:

• Does your system allow patients to schedule their own appointments online?
• Does your appointment software automatically schedule reminders that reach clients via text, email, or their preferred communication channel?
• Can your staff see appointments for each provider at a glance?
• How easy is it to create an appointment in your current appointment scheduling system?

Automation does more than make it easier to set appointments and check patients in. Patients can choose the right professional to help them with their particular condition. Combined with a call center that can manage appointments after hours, appointment setting software can streamline the front desk experience.

Best of all, you can customize your settings to allow for same-day appointments for emergencies and access reporting that shows counts for various procedures and appointment times by day, week, or month.

Medical appointment software adds a ton of value to your practice, including:

• Setting and managing recurring appointments
• Printing schedules for physicians and other practitioners
• Tracking activity to improve wait times and other metrics that boost patient satisfaction
• Accessing one-click co-pay acceptance to improve your revenue stream

So, making the right choice when it comes to your medical appointment software can mean the difference between a waiting room full of annoyed patients and efficient appointment-setting practices that make your patient’s loyal customers.

New Patient Registration Improvements

Patients often complain about the new patient registration process for the following reasons:

• Too many forms
• Duplicate information on forms
• Takes up too much time during the office visit

With the right automation tools, you can streamline the new patient registration process by moving it online. Patients should not have to re-enter their name, insurance information, and contact information on multiple forms.

Paper-free new patient processing makes sense. It can also help you save time and money and alleviate patient dissatisfaction. Explore the solutions offered by OmniMD, such as pre-visit data capture, context-aware forms, and data validation for consistent data.

Making Diagnostics, Reports, and Medication Information Available

Implementing a patient portal allows your clients to retrieve prescription information, diagnostics results, and other reports impacting their health. Making this information available online can also help healthcare providers prioritize urgent cases. By improving medical care and outcomes, online diagnostic tools, reporting, and medication management further improve customer satisfaction.

Providing immediate access to lab results can help practitioners come to a conclusive, accurate diagnosis faster. This means that the patient receives the right treatment earlier in the progression of diseases and disorders.

After treatment, patients may have questions regarding symptoms, complications, and other concerns that come up during the recovery process. Allowing patients to send a message directly in the patient portal can provide updated information for physicians looking to recommend additional treatment or alleviate patient concerns. Alternately, limited engagement can slow recovery periods and put the patient at risk.

Find out how vigorous engagement with patients through a patient portal facilitates care transitions such as diagnosis, treatment, and aftercare.

Request a demo today!

OmniMD offers numerous tools that can help your practice retain patients through improved engagement. Contact us today for a free consultation on how our tools can streamline your practice.