Keeping your customers happy is essential to the long-term success of your retail healthcare business. Not only is improving your patients’ experience valuable to both the patient and their family, but doing so is also associated with positive clinical outcomes.
One of the most effective ways to give your customers a better healthcare experience is leveraging technology. Keep reading to learn:
- How technology and retail healthcare fit together
- How to use technology to improve your customers’ experience
- Why digital signage could be the technological solution you’ve been looking for
Understanding the push for technology in retail healthcare
By some estimates, the U.S. retail clinics market size will be worth $7.3 billion by 2025. That’s based on a projected compound annual growth rate of 20.3%.
The reason for this growth is clear: retail healthcare clinics provide their patients with more streamlined experiences. They enable a customer to get their shopping done and see a doctor without having to make multiple trips.
This is a level of convenience that traditional healthcare clinics will always struggle to match.
However, although widely predicted, the path to retail healthcare dominance isn’t set in stone. Clinics in this space still need to take care of their customers and continuously expand upon their offerings to keep the momentum they currently have.
Investing in technology is one way that retail healthcare clinics can do this. Technology matters in the healthcare setting because it expands the range of services that you can provide your patients and helps you improve upon the ones you already do offer.
How technology can improve your customers’ healthcare experience
Reduce the workload for your administrative staff
Retail healthcare clinics can use technology to automate some of the tasks that their administrative staff would need to perform manually otherwise. Digital check-in kiosks are a great example of this.
These kiosks allow patients to fill out forms and submit them automatically. Your customers will be able to complete the check-in process on their own without having to interrupt your administrative staff members from their other duties.
This matters because it frees up your staff members’ time so that they have more of it to spend on the complicated tasks that demand their full attention. Additionally, your staff will have more time to answer your customers’ questions and will be able to push them through your administrative processes with more efficiency. This adds up to a big net-win for your customers.
Create more inviting waiting areas
According to patients, waiting is one of the worst parts of visiting the doctor. You’re never going to turn waiting into an entirely enjoyable experience for your patients. But there are steps that you can take to make waiting at your retail healthcare clinic a more enjoyable experience than most facilities provide. Technology can help you do this.
For example, you might consider setting up digital signage in your waiting area. Digital signage makes it easy to curate waiting area TV programming that comforts patients, improves their experiences and engages them.
You’ll even be able to display your custom advertisements in-between the content that you display. You can use these ads to advertise your services or to advertise some of the products that your supermarket sells.
Increase communication between healthcare professionals
Retail healthcare clinics can be very busy places, which sometimes border on chaos. In an environment like this, it can be tough for your healthcare professionals to remain in constant communication with another. Digital signage technology can help you solve this problem.
Internally-facing screens with digital signage software make it easy to share information about scheduling, patient status and more. You can simply set the screens up in a common area and any member of your team that passes the screen will instantly be able to see the information that you deem most important.
Make healthcare more accessible
Thanks to COVID-19, telemedicine is more popular than ever. There are several good reasons for that. One is that it allows patients who may be vulnerable to infectious diseases to meet with a healthcare professional without putting themselves at risk.
Another benefit of telemedicine is that it makes healthcare more accessible. It allows patients who live far away from your retail clinic to see a doctor without having to find time for a commute that may not fit into their schedule.
Benefits like these show why many analysts believe that telemedicine will only continue growing more popular in the years to come.
That’s why retail healthcare clinics need to provide it as an option for their patients. Doing so will reduce the barriers that your customers have to face to receive the care that they want, thereby improving their healthcare experience.
Collecting and leveraging patient-driven data
Big data has the potential to radically change the healthcare outcomes that clinics and hospitals can provide their patients. But you don’t need fancy algorithms or expensive analytics software to use data to your retail healthcare clinic’s advantage — nor do you have to compromise on keeping your patients’ data protected.
Instead, consider collecting depersonalized data from patients who have recently visited your clinic. You can do so by sending them an email after their visit or asking them to fill out a release form on a digital kiosk during the checkout process.
You don’t need to ask your customers for confidential information. Instead, just ask them what their experience was like in your clinic.
As you gather this feedback, you can use it to determine which parts of your clinic are providing your patients with a positive experience already and which need improvements.
Keep your patients informed
Providing your patients with valuable information is another way to improve their experience at your retail healthcare clinic. You can share that information via screens that digital signage software powers.
There are several types of information that can provide value to your customers. One is your average wait time. You can give each customer a number and display that number on a screen to show them how much longer they will need to wait. Doing this will give your customers’ an incremental sense of progress that will help them feel more comfortable.
Keeping your patients informed can also mean sharing important health and safety information with them. Doing this can improve their outcomes by ensuring that they have the information necessary to make the right decisions for their health.
Reduce your patients’ waiting anxiety
For some patients, visiting a doctor is an anxiety-producing affair. Often, this anxiety is at its worst during the waiting process that takes place before the visit occurs. You can use technology to give your patients something else to focus on besides their anxiety.
For example, you could use digital signage to display OTT entertainment channels that capture your customers’ attention and keep them engaged. This could help them manage their anxiety and make them feel more comfortable with visiting your clinic.
Digital signage makes it easy to improve your customers’ healthcare experience
Improving your customers’ healthcare experience is essential to winning their repeat business and growing your retail healthcare center. Investing in the right technology makes this much easier for you to do. That’s why you should consider adding digital signage to your clinic.
Digital signs allow you to improve your customers’ healthcare experience in multiple ways with a single solution. You can use them to:
- Improve the efficiency of your check-in process
- Keep your patients entertained with customized channels
- Share important information about health and safety
- Improve your team’s communication to reduce inefficiencies in your processes
- And much more
Digital signage is also very easy to manage. You can do so on virtually any device that has an internet connection.
Additionally, after you’ve set up your display rotation, you won’t have to exert very much effort to keep it going. Just add new displays when you have them and delete older ones as needed. Your digital signage software will handle everything else for you.
UPshow can power your digital signage solution
If you think that digital signage is right for your retail healthcare clinic, you need a few things to start using it. First, you’ll need to choose the screens that you want to use for your digital signage displays.
If you already have screens set up in your clinic, you can just use those. If not, check out this blog post to learn which screens are right for you.
After that, you’re going to need digital signage software that will link up your displays and make it easy for you to manage the content that they display. UPshow’s digital signage software is perfect for retail healthcare applications.
Our software makes it easy for you to educate your patients, boost your sales and improve your internal communication. With more than 500 OTT channels to choose from, our software also makes keeping your customers’ entertained incredibly simple.
But don’t take our word for it. Consider trying UPshow yourself to see what it can do for your retail healthcare clinic. You can schedule a custom demo with us today to learn more about what we can do for you.
