When selecting a residence, seniors want a space that makes them feel at home.
In that same breath, they also want exciting features and amenities that they can explore during their free time.
And while understanding each patient’s unique needs can sometimes feel like an uphill battle, it doesn’t have to be.
With a measurement program in place, you can collect insight to better understand current patients, attract new ones, and streamline your backend operations.
To showcase the potential of measuring the patient experience in long-term care, we’re unpacking the return you can see from implementing a feedback program.
The ROI in Measuring Your Long-Term Care Experience
Smoother Operations
Your daily operations and your patient’s experience go hand in hand; if service is slow, the experience suffers. If your staff is friendly, your experience thrives.
When you measure the patient experience you get direct insight into operational strengths and weaknesses. This includes metrics such as; the speed of service, best performing employees, busy times of day, cleanliness, and more.
Using these insights, managers, and employees can be proactive in decision making. Using the data provided, teams can allocate time, resources, money, and personnel to ensure each patient is satisfied.
Patient Retention
One of the biggest returns of facilitating a feedback program is retaining patients.
By measuring the experience, you listen to each patient’s unique needs which in turn allows you to take a more personalized approach to communication and service.
This insight can be as simple as understanding cafeteria food preferences, sentiments on common rooms, preferred amenities, favoured employees, and so on.
By looking at this data and making sound changes that align with patient values, you celebrate their patronage. A simple gesture to show you care about your patient’s opinions and will work alongside them for a great stay.
Cleaner Facilities
No one wants to come home to a disorganized or dirty space.
With a measurement program in place, you can understand the level of cleanliness throughout your facility directly from your patients. This allows you to rectify the issue but can also provide you with insight into what days require more hours or more cleaning staff.
Further, using a real-time feedback solution like Loop, you can set automations that prompt patients in specific locations. Learn what areas of your facility need more attention and communicate in real-time with patients to let them know you’re on it.
Greater Brand Awareness
According to a study by Nielsen, “84% of consumers trust the recommendations of others over other forms of marketing”.
Word of mouth marketing is one of the most powerful ways of winning new patients. Especially with seniors, getting a verified recommendation from a friend or family member can make all the difference in housing selection.
With a measurement program in place, you can make memorable changes to the experience. Something as simple as referencing a previous meal order or asking them how to improve a program they signed up for, can increase satisfaction and the likelihood of a referral.
Taking feedback collection a step further, with a solution like Loop, you can address any negative sentiments in the moment. Let’s say, for instance, one of your patients is dissatisfied with a meal they ordered. By simply stating their dissatisfaction, your team is notified and the message follows with a negative sentiment rating. You can then take action in real-time to recover the experience – deterring any negative sentiment from being broadcasted online or to other potential patients. It’s an effective way to ensure you’re maintaining your facility’s reputation and encourage positive communication.
Happier Employees
When you measure the patient experience you arm employees with the tools to be successful. They can feel more confident approaching patients with greater context, increasing the likelihood of a more pleasant interaction.
For the employee, insight is key to driving positive communication and can even help develop better relationships among each other.
Although catering to your patient’s experience may be your main objective, appeasing and driving happy employees runs in parallel.
After all, your employees are the ones engaging with your patients regularly.
How Loop Can Empower A Greater Experience
For long-term care facilities, having a better understanding of the experience is key to consistently enhancing it.
Just like any other business, a patients needs changes over time, which means in order to deliver, you need to be listening.
With a sophisticated solution like the Loop Experience Platform, you can take your measurement capabilities to the next level.
Measure key touch-points of your space on a variety of channels, like kiosks, QR codes, SMS text, and more. All feedback is consolidated into a single inbox where departments are tagged and the level of urgency is provided. If a customer is upset about the cleanliness of their room, negative sentiment is attached to the conversation and your housekeeping staff is notified immediately. Data on the time it took to resolve the complaint is also noted for future reference and benchmarking.
Conversations are also analyzed for your team so you obtain complete context. Patient trends are shared in a heat map and keywords are highlighted for insight into future needs. If you need these insights regularly on hand, simply add them to your welcome dashboard so your team has immediate visibility. Using Loop, it’s as easy as selecting the data you want and exporting it in a meaningful way.
Lastly, real-time performance metrics are provided to help you understand what employees are excelling. Using this insight you can celebrate exceptional employees and set up regular monthly 1:1 meetings to empower those who are behind. Consistently measuring allows you to better manage your time and build an employee schedule that offers optimal service.
