As a hospital or clinic, you’re always looking for ways to improve the in-patient experience.
Regardless if it is in-room, at check-in, or in your cafeteria, understanding how to cater to patients while maintaining healthy operations is crucial. As technology evolves and preferences change, it can feel like a guessing game trying to understand what your customers want and how to deliver on it. Thankfully there’s a more efficient way to deliver on customer preferences and improve the experience.
By using a feedback program along with sophisticated technology supporting your staff, you can measure the in-patient experience and build a thriving clinical environment. In this blog, we explore how you can start by measuring the in-patient experience and the benefits that follow. Let’s dive in.
Why Measure The In-Patient Experience
The in-patient journey can involve several touchpoints worth measuring. Measuring key areas of your facility can present you with a wealth of helpful insights to improve the experience. Here we highlight just a few of the many benefits.
Address Operational Pain Points
While you may be able to uncover specific pain points on your own, addressing them or getting support from other departments can feel difficult without evidence to support it.
With a feedback program that measures in-patient experience, you can get quantifiable data that supports investment into operations. Maybe it’s the shortage of staff at a specific time of day or specific protocols with patients that need to be modified. Measuring the in-patient experience can help you understand where issues occur and how often, so you can take action.
Understand Patient Preferences
The needs of patients have changed greatly over the years. In addition, no one patient is the same and preferences differ. With feedback from each patient’s experience, you can identify what are common preferences, requests and complaints. This allows staff to modify service and empowers them to become more proactive.
As an example; How was the patient’s meal? Did staff check in on them frequently? How was the friendliness of your staff?
Knowing the answers to these questions not only equips your team with the tools to deliver great service but helps more senior staff predict or forecast trends in the future, to continuously evolve service and offerings.
Recover Negative Experiences
More often than not, negative experiences can be recovered. It just comes down to understanding what impacted the experience in the first place and then responding in a timely manner.
When you measure the experience, you get direct insight into staff performance and the overall sentiment of your facility directly from the patient. Especially if you’re using a customer experience solution like Loop, insight is received in real-time so you can take action and recover the experience.
Measuring the experience comes with its set of benefits. So, how can you start measuring the in-patient experience?
One of the most effective ways, as a hospital or clinic, is through QR codes.
Not only are QR codes extremely accessible but they provide a mountain of useful insights. In this next section, we explore how using a QR code for the in-patient experience can aid your facility.
Improve The In-Patient Experience Experience With QR Codes
QR codes hold immense benefits. For hospitals and clinics specifically, QR codes provide simplicity. The patient scans the code, fills out the survey and feedback is directed to you in real-time. Since it’s already a tool used by so many people today, it makes it even easier to transition into the experience. For perspective, QR codes are used regularly with an average of 11 million US households scanning a QR code every year.
QR codes are also very flexible in terms of placement. Hospitals can get as granular as a per bed basis, or obtain more general patient information via entrances and exits. Regardless, you can measure key areas of your facility for more specific insight. In addition, with a QR code, you have the option to print them on signage, place stickers in-room, or add them to a digital kiosk.
Another great benefit is that QR codes are inexpensive compared to other survey methods and they’re simple to deploy. Especially if you’re working alongside a customer experience solution, you can direct patients to an on-brand portal and collect insight along the way.
Lastly, and one of the most important benefits for hospitals, QR codes empower contactless self-serve communication. Your hospital is busy, and your staff is tight trying to address your patient needs. With a QR code, patients can help themselves to your survey and submit it without any staff intervention, so you receive the most insight.
Considering QR Codes At Your Facility
If you’ve determined surveying your patients facility-wide, your program will start by selecting a solution that can empower you to measure experience and provide actionable data.
The Loop Experience Platform is a holistic solution that consolidates your messages and provides data to better the experience.
Using the Loop Messaging, all patient comments and concerns are directed to a single view. Keeping conversations organized, staff can have insight into patient sentiment and a breakdown of trending topics. This provides conversation context while also highlighting keywords and phrases that may come up with other patients in the future.
Further, with Loop, you can customize QR code surveys for specific locations. For instance, maybe you want to send a distinct survey to people visiting your cafeteria versus your gift shop or send a different survey in your communal patient lounge versus your private rooms. This is a key automated feature that ensures the right questions are being directed, to the right person in the right context.
In addition, for higher-level staff, dashboards and reporting from the Loop Experience Platform can prove to be extremely useful. Whether insight on busier times of day, average patient sentiment, individual staff performance, trending topics, and more, you can be better prepared to strategically enhance the experience. You can hold regular team meetings and inform staff of their performance. This helps motivate them to encourage a positive patient experience.
When it comes to measuring the in-patient experience, there’s a lot to consider including, the strategic placement of your QR codes, survey question types, moments to engage, survey responsiveness, and so on. It can be overwhelming, which is why it’s so important to work with an intuitive solution and a team that’s there to support you every step of the way.
