Creating a positive customer experience takes more than meeting consumer needs or demands. Businesses must exceed those expectations to retain customer loyalty and drive revenue growth. And the healthcare industry is no exception.
With soaring healthcare costs combined with an online retail marketplace for health insurance, today’s patients want a healthcare customer experience that is convenient and tailored to their needs.
In its literature review, the International Hospital Federation reported on research findings by Forrester Consulting, which show that over 25% of patients changed providers because of a negative digital health experience. Since 2019, that number has scaled by 40%.
Patient-centric technologies are improving the customer experience in healthcare in unprecedented ways. Healthcare providers are being pushed to embrace the digital healthcare transformation or risk their patients leaving them behind.
Trending approaches in managing healthcare experiences
Patient healthcare experience includes all patient interactions across multiple touchstones in the healthcare system. These interactions include:
- Any member of a healthcare team.
- Access to health information and resources.
- Timely access to clinical or telehealth appointments.
- Clear communication channels between a patient and their provider.
- Transparency in health policies, services and fee structures.
Across the healthcare continuum, providers are investing in blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), and other virtual healthcare technologies to create a meaningful, convenient and personalized healthcare experience that can drive better patient outcomes, as well as increasing patient accessibility through tech-based solutions like in-office screens.
Reducing anxiety with technology
Patients experience varying levels of anxiety at different points of their healthcare experience. For some, anxiety may run high before an outpatient surgery while others may feel tense or on edge in the waiting room or triage.
Healthcare facilities can reduce patient anxiety by creating an immersive experience with innovative technologies. Research shows that clinical facilities that use immersive virtual reality (VR) technologies witness a reduction in both anxiety and pain in children and adults.
While VR may not be practical or affordable for many clinical practices, health providers can create an immersive experience in simpler yet effective ways. For instance, studies show that when music plays in clinical waiting rooms and preoperative areas, it has an anxiety-reducing effect on patients.
Digital tools can increase patient engagement
Patients need access to the right resources to make informed decisions about their health and wellness. Healthcare professionals can use digital tools to increase patient engagement, leading to positive health outcomes.
Health facilities are outfitting their communal and treatment-room TV screens with relevant educational resources and patient-centric materials. These digital tools empower patients to learn more about their medical conditions and treatment options in accessible ways.
Practitioners can also use digital tools to promote better transparency and build trust with their patients — two pillars necessary to improve patient engagement. One finding reports that practitioners who used digital screens to display electronic health records (EHR) to their patients experienced higher levels of patient engagement.
Opening channels of communication with digital signage
No two patients are alike. Likewise, no two patient experiences are alike either. The more feedback healthcare clinics can garner from their patient population, the closer they’ll be to delivering the kind of healthcare experience patients want. As for the clinical team, data collected from these patient feedback platforms can drive patient-centric healthcare and facility improvements.
One of the simplest ways your clinic can solicit patient feedback is to invite them (or even incentivize them) to provide feedback about their pre-visit expectations and post-visit experience.
You can plant screen displays and other digital signage at key patient access points (e.g., the check-in and check-out areas, etc.) so they are more likely to access them, taking your patients’ convenience and health into consideration.
The right technology can help you elevate customer experiences
Create an immersive patient experience
Creating an immersive patient experience to reduce anxiety levels and drive patient engagement doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, you can use existing digital screens and technologies in your clinical practice to do it.
UPshow Health is an on-premise marketing cloud-based software designed to transform your clinic’s digital screens into conduits for the type of patient experience your patients have been looking for.
With UPshow Health, you can create an immersive patient experience by:
- Offering accessible patient-centric medical and educational resources to scale patient engagement.
- Displaying the latest treatment options and procedures.
- Introducing your clinical care team to ease patients’ comfort levels.
- Keeping your patients in the know about new in-clinic offerings, patient app and portal updates and mergers or community partnerships.
- Showcasing must-know informative displays about your clinic to build patient loyalty.
- Reducing anxiety by offering games like in-clinic trivia and other entertainment options.
QR codes make communication a two-way street
The cornerstone of effective patient-provider communication is accessibility. QR-code technology is a cutting-edge way to empower patients by putting a communication channel in the palm of their hands.
Displaying QR-code technology on your screens invites patients to engage with your clinic from their own devices.
You can use QR-code technology to invite patients to:
- Encourage feedback by asking them to complete a pre or post-visit survey.
- Drive better patient engagement by giving them access to the patient portal.
- Keep them abreast of new products and treatments on your clinic’s e-commerce site.
- Guide them to your clinic’s social media pages to build community and trust.
Prioritize entertainment and education
The beauty of ever-evolving technology is that you can offer your patients more than one feature or resource at a time. For instance, UPshow Health allows you to educate and entertain your patients simultaneously with its fixed and multi-display capabilities.
You can also use content scheduling capabilities to set the duration of your educational and entertainment options. It also allows you to control the content of your screens across multiple locations or even on a screen-by-screen basis. These capabilities will also equip your health facility with the necessary insights and analytics to give unique patient populations the best possible healthcare customer experience.
UPshow can help your patients get more out of their visits
Patients want the best of both worlds — modern, innovative and accessible healthcare along with a personalized and empathetic experience.UPshow Health can engage your patients in all areas of your practice and help you give them the healthcare customer experience they deserve. Sign up today for a free demo of UPshow Health and see how digital signage is transforming the patient healthcare experience one health facility at a time.
