Four Ways Ensure Patient Satisfaction and Loyalty
Has your medical practice experienced a decline in patient visits, new patients and new patient inquiries? Have you seen an increase in cancellations and no-shows? Would you like to know how some practitioners are reversing this trend? Here are four things they do to help ensure patient satisfaction and loyalty.
Keep Medical Practice Appointments
Nothing annoys patients more than waiting 30, 60, 90 minutes or more to see their medical practice doctor. From the patient’s perspective, having a health problem is inconvenient enough. Feeling that their own time and schedules are insignificant to the doctor and being made to wait for their time with the doctor adds insult to injury. Physicians who run on time are likely to have more compliant, less disgruntled patients.
Build Relationships with Your Medical Practice Patients
If patients feel like you care about them, they are less likely to seek other practitioners. Build relationships by making eye contact, listening and providing thorough explanations of treatment options and expected benefits. This may seem like an obvious no-brainer but get to know your patients by name. Use their name when you talk to them. Successful physicians know their patients well. They know their patients’ hobbies and interests and, often, they know their families, too.
Perform Regular Patient Satisfaction Surveys
Survey your patients at regular intervals to determine how satisfied they are with your services, personnel and practice. Let patients tell you how you might improve your care. Address negative feedback immediately and personally. Call or speak to the unhappy patient and try to resolve their complaints swiftly. They’ll tell their friends and relatives how you went out of your way to help them. This is one way you make yourself a “referrable” medical practice.
Speak Their Language
Talk to your patients, not at them. Explain their health problem and treatment options thoroughly in lay terms, not medical clinician lingo. Patients don’t think in clinical terms, and many are reluctant to ask questions. So try to think like a patient instead of like a clinician. Then speak their language when communicating your services and benefits.
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