A report produced by Deloitte on the value of patient experience highlighted that Hospitals with a “low” HCAHPS rating (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) saw a net margin of 1.8%.
Whereas, Hospitals with an “excellent” HCAHPS rating saw a net margin of 4.7% on average, indicating the importance of patient and visitor satisfaction.
The report also highlights that patient experience beyond the examination room is the main contributor to this variance in net margin.
Good patient experience is an intrinsically valuable goal, and patients and visitors are increasingly emphasizing patient experience as part of care quality.
Almost three-quarters (71%) of surveyed patients use online reviews as their first step to finding a new healthcare provider, meaning a provider’s online reputation is often the first impression they make on many potential patients.
Improving the patient experience beyond physical care
It’s important that healthcare providers are looking beyond the delivery of care as the majority of Americans are happy with the medical diagnosis and care.
A study by Gensler shows that 65% of those surveyed on healthcare provider satisfaction, rated the wayfinding at their facilities to be worse than the medical care provided.
As a direct result of this, patients and visitors were more likely to have negative experiences.
Making it important not to just solely focus on the delivery of care but it’s as important for providers to consider a patient’s perspective beyond the examination room.
To increase the quantity and quality of healthcare reviews, providers can also automate 3rd party review reminders when signed into the guest WiFi.
Providers can integrate with global review providers such as Trustpilot, to automatically prompt visitors who connect to your WiFi to leave a review after their visit. They can then set a time, for example, 24 or 48 hours post-visit, to send an automatic review request.
Reduce the stress & anxiety of hospital visits and improve the patient experience
As previously mentioned, poor wayfinding signage design can cause undue stress and frustration for patients and visitors.
Healthcare campuses that have integrated new technologies alongside traditional wayfinding signs ensure visitors they can easily access and navigate their network of hospital services by enabling users to:
- See turn-by-turn directions: Blue dot guidance showing your exact location within five feet on an interactive map.
- Use search functionality by department/service, rooms, elevators, restrooms, food and dining, and more inpatient care areas.
- Be automatically re-routed if they go off track or if an elevator is closed for maintenance.
- Estimated walking time and distance
Controlling cross-contamination using effective wayfinding technology
A US-based hospital has recently made some proactive updates to its wayfinding application by deciding to limit points of access to the building.
The medical institution took this action in order to better control the flow of patients with Covid-19 symptoms and reduce the potential risk of spreading the virus among other patients.
Nine entrances were reduced to just three and a bridge that connects the parking garage to the building in an attempt to manage the influx of patients and reduce the risk of further spreading of the virus.
This was done within a matter of minutes by simply shutting down points of entry in the main hospital’s wayfinding system.
Once complete, these updates are automatically pushed out to the wayfinding applications (kiosk, web and/or mobile) to update any routes, so that it no longer includes these entrances, taking away the need for human interaction when attempting to relay the message.
Purple’s wayfinding app has already achieved notable success with blue dot navigation application implementation across the United States, like Summa Health System, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Want to see how Purple can help improve your patient/visitor experience and increase revenue?