health education | wellness

Category: Engagement

  • 5 Ways to Engage with Patients More Effectively

    5 Ways to Engage with Patients More Effectively

    One of the biggest buzzwords in the corporate world, at universities, and in the health care business is engagement. Whether you are doing it through face-to-face consultation, email correspondence, social media platforms, or by having a well-trained and attentive staff who can answer patient questions, engaging effectively is a vital asset. To help generate that kind of value-adding engagement, here are five tips or ways to engage with patients more effectively.

    Stay in Touch

    5 Ways to Engage with Patients More Effectively
    Whether it is through newsletters, Twitter tweets, Facebook updates, or in-office health seminars and similar events, keeping in touch is the key to patient engagement.

    Patient Surveys

    A great way to get feedback from your patients while making them feel more involved in their health care is to use anonymous electronic surveys. Ask patients questions to determine how satisfied they are, how informed they are, or what suggestions they have for your office.

    In-House Workshops

    5 Ways to Engage with Patients More Effectively

    Another engagement tool that patients love is when you host health-related seminars at your office. These could be about topics like nutrition or exercise, or you could invite professionals from complementary modalities like massage or acupuncture to give presentations and answer questions.

    Invest in Staff Training

    If your staff – from the receptionist to the lab technician to your nurses – are better equipped to know how to be active listeners, they can become your eyes and ears. That alone can significantly magnify the level of patient engagement as they continuously dialog with patients on any number of different issues and consciously nurture interpersonal patient/provider relationships.

    Schedule More Wisely

    5 Ways to Engage with Patients More Effectively

    Because health care professionals are so busy these days, it is easy to overlook the value and importance of patient engagement. The most direct kind of engagement is talking one-on-one with your patient, and the best opportunity to make that happen is during routine office visits. So set aside an extra 10 minutes per patient and you’ll exponentially increase the level of engagement.

  • Improving Patient Experience: Can We Learn from Disney?

    Improving Patient Experience: Can We Learn from Disney?

    Disney World, despite being an enormous facility that receives vast numbers of visitors every hour of the day, somehow manages to earn praise for superior customer service. About 70% of Disney customers are so pleased, in fact, that they return to the theme park for future vacations. When thinking about improving patient experience, providers can learn by observing how Disney handles its customers.

    improve patient experience

    Here are four of the top ideas that can guide healthcare professionals toward increased goodwill and better customer service evaluations.

    Frontline Resources

    Disney supports those who interact directly with customers with sufficient tools and technologies to solve problems and answer questions quickly and decisively. There is also direct access to managers and decision makers, so that if a frontline employee cannot resolve a problem or answer a question, they can find someone who can without unnecessary and frustrating delays.

    Courtesy

    All employees are trained to make courtesy a priority, regardless of how difficult a situation may be, in order to put customers at ease and ensure that they feel respected, listened to, and appreciated. Employees are also offered special customer service training, including role playing of various scenarios, so that they fully understand how to execute their responsibilities in a professional manner.

    impove patient experience

    Scripted Responses

    Everyone at Disney is on the same page, so that the brand message and image projected is reliably constant and consistent. Part of the reason that kind of continuity and teamwork is so effective is that employees have scripts they can follow when greeting customers, answering questions, resolving problems, or responding to emergency situations. Rather than feeling unprepared, they are already knowledgeable about what to say and how to respond, and they can then focus their energy and attention in a calm and poised way to ensure that the customer’s needs are met.

    Exit Success

    Disney also makes sure that exiting its facility is a smooth transition, even creating systems to help keep track of where people parked so that they don’t have trouble locating their cars. You may not need to help patients find their vehicles, of course, but the idea or philosophy represented by that story is that when customers have a good exit experience they leave with a good feeling. When improving patient experience, healthcare facilities should make the communication of final instructions, answering of questions, and filling out of exit paperwork as efficient and easy as possible.