What Is the Patient Experience? And Why Is Patient Engagement So Important?

What is the patient experience?

The short answer: the patient experience is any way a patient engages with their healthcare journey. This means that every interaction a patient has with a medical practice falls under some part of the patient experience.

This includes:

• Accessing care and scheduling appointments
• Providing documentation for the intake process
• The experience of the visit
• Post-care follow-ups
• Long-term care management

To medical practices, these elements make up just one part of providing excellent care, but to patients, they make up most of, if not all, of their experience. That is why it is so important to present patients with a complete and comprehensive experience, so that they remain engaged in their own care and, in turn, with their provider.

Table of Contents

1. What stages make up an engaging patient experience?
2. Why is improving access to care important?
3. Why is streamlining the intake process important?
4. Why is it important to improve the quality of patient visits?
5. Why is care coordination important to the patient experience?
6. Why is care management important to overall patient health?

What stages make up an engaging patient experience?

We now know what defines the patient experience, but how can a practice achieve a truly engaging patient experience while managing the difficulties of everyday practice management? It all starts by identifying the key components of an engaging patient experience. These are: 

1.Access to care

Care access essentially entails any way a potential patient would access care from a medical practice. This can certainly involve whether a practice accepts their insurance or not but, instead, mostly refers to how patients  find a practice and then successfully schedule a visit.

Patients can access a provider by finding them in online searches or by scheduling an appointment through various methods. The more methods available to them, the more access they have to receiving care from a specific medical practice.

2.Intake process

Have you ever been told to arrive 15 minutes early to your first appointment at a new medical practice? That extra time is to accommodate for the visit intake process. The intake process consists of the collection of information from a patient by a medical practice before care is delivered.

In recent years, this process has shifted from forms in a clipboard to digital forms that can be sent directly to a person's phone. This shift can possibly eliminate that 15 minutes, which can often extend into the appointment time, causing a disruption to a practices schedule. The more this process moves towards convenience, the more time will be saved by everyone involved.

3. Care visits

The actual care visit makes up a substantial amount of the overall care journey. While this can be the most time-consuming  part of the care experience for physicians, it can end up being the most impactful for patients.

For providers, the patient visit itself can often be overlooked because of the routine nature of it. There are so many mandatory elements that a physician must include, many dictated by electronic charting, that it can be easy to fall into a rhythm here and forget about making this step as effective as possible.

4. Care coordination

The coordination of care that surrounds a patient visit can often have an incredible impact on the success of care and quality of health outcomes. If a medical practice has effective solutions for care coordination like convenient payment methods, providing education materials, secure communication channels, automated referrals, and patient surveys, they are more likely to be able to facilitate much better care coordination.

All of the solutions listed above act as the support needed to facilitate an effective care journey and give physicians the best shot at enabling better overall healthcare outcomes.

5. Care management

Care management is very similar to coordination of care but mostly refers to the long-term management of a patient's health. This can be enabled through remote patient monitoring programs that make use of telehealth visits and remote monitoring with integrated medical devices.

Additionally, care can be managed in a long-term capacity by helping patients properly manage their medical expenses, proactively caring for the community with the help of advanced population analytics, and any other method of extending care past the initial visit.

Why is improving access to care important?

Access is the very first thing that can either bring a patient to a practice or prevent a patient from selecting a practice. Because of this, it is the most important aspect of the patient's experience to not only implement, but to implement well.

• Access to care can take various forms. Some include:
• Convenient self-scheduling options
• Reputation management to strengthen online presence
• Automated waitlists
• Chatbots to catch people when your staff is busy

But, why exactly is it so important to improve access to care at a practice?

The impact of time

Time can play a big role in preventing access to services at a practice. Most practices operate from 8 am – 5 pm, which is coincidentally when most potential patients are working as well. If patients are working, they are less likely to be able to call and schedule an appointment.

This can be prevented by having convenient self-scheduling options that allow prospective patients to inquire about care on their own time. This gives patients the freedom to both schedule their appointments and attend their appointments at times that are most convenient for them.

Automated waitlists also add to this convenience by putting patients on a waitlist for preferred times and then automatically alerting them if there are any openings. This drastically decreases the amount of time patients need for following up with calls, which in turn takes up additional time from staff.

If practices make access convenient for patients, adoption and retention rates are sure to follow.

Keeping up with demand

The demand for care is ever-increasing. With the US population aging and the rate of chronic illnesses rising, the demand for care will only go up from here. This can put a substantial burden on medical practice staff members and physicians, while also limiting the amount of potential patients they can help.

There are, however, ways to both decrease the burden on staff and increase their ability to assist patients in accessing a practice. Specifically, staff have new tools, such as chatbots, for automating screening questions so they can attend to more patients' needs. Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbots are a great way to accomplish this. These chatbots can  help patients when phone lines are either busy or unavailable due to office hours. And with recent advances in AI, they are capable of handling most concerns.

For more on improving access to your medical practice, check out this framework recommended by the Association of American Medical Colleges. It gives a great overview of efforts needed to strengthen access to ambulatory care.

Why is streamlining the intake process important?

With the intake process acting as the first real point of contact between patients and healthcare providers, it is incredibly important to get this right and set the tone for the rest of the patient experience.

Streamlining this process allows providers to:

• Reduce the time needed for patient visits
• Free up office staff to attend to other pressing matters
• Increase the accuracy of medical information

How can this be achieved?

Operational efficiency

Digital intake forms can speed up the registration process by allowing patients to fill out necessary forms on their phones as early as when they schedule their appointment or in the days leading to their appointment. This decreases the amount of paperwork that office staff needs to administer and process.

Freeing up time that staff would usually spend on intake allows them to see to other needs around the office and reduces the average amount of time needed for patient visits.

Clerical automations

Automating processes such as checking for eligibility can eliminate a major part of a staff’s workflow and minimizes the chance of errors occurring in the process. This prevents unexpected billing discrepancies that can be inconvenient for both the practice and the patient down the line.

This enables better cost and payment transparency, which will boost other elements like care maintenance as a patient progresses through their healthcare journey.

Why is it important to improve the quality of patient visits?

The patient visit can make or break the overall experience of receiving care. It can also be one of the most demanding parts on physicians and office staff. Between keeping appointments organized and on-time and actually carrying them out, there is a lot that goes in to them and even more that can go wrong.

The best ways to improve the quality of patient visits are coincidentally the ways that are most likely to improve the overall quality of the patient experience as well.

1. Meeting patients where they are

There are many reasons why it may be inconvenient for a patient to have to go to a medical practice for a visit. From childcare to work to varying levels of mobility, it can take a lot to make the trip happen.

Virtual care options can curb this difficulty by meeting patients where they are. With the rise in virtual visits over the past 5 years, they have become an expected option for receiving care, and they don’t look like they’re going anywhere anytime soon.

By leaning into virtual visits, practices can make a massive difference to those who find it difficult to physically make it into an office. Offering a convenient care option for everyone, no matter their obstacles in getting to the office, betters the patient experience for all.

2. Optimizing documentation

One of the largest ways that a practice can elevate the patient visit is by starting with the physician. AI-powered documentation software that is capable of listening in to a patient visit and then converting the transcript into a structured SOAP note can do wonders for physicians.

Not only does this free a provider to be more present with the patient, but it reduces the amount of time they spend on documentation. This gives them more time to see additional patients and more peace of mind thanks to a reduced workload.

If this documentation solution is effectively integrated with the rest of a practice’s health IT solutions, workflows are reduced even further with generated SOAP notes being automatically transferred to the EHR.

NextGen® Ambient Assist is a great example of the power of this technology and the advantage that comes from true integration.

3. Building more meaningful patient connections

If physicians are able to focus less on documentation, this allows for them to better allocate that focus to the patient during a visit. This builds more meaningful relationships and also allows them to be more attentive during the visit.

If they are less concerned with taking note of everything they notice, physicians can apply that attention to the conversation with the patient. This change allows for more active listening on the provider’s part. This increased engagement makes the visit seem more productive in the patient's mind and could lead them to being more engaged in their overall care.

Why is care coordination important to the patient experience?

Care management focuses on optimizing patient health outcomes through proactive monitoring, communication, and support. By making it as effective and efficient as possible, medical practices can ensure increased participation from patients and, in turn, better overall health outcomes.

A lot of the methods used for improving care management also happen to improve the overall effectiveness of treatment plans. Methods such as automated messaging and medication refills maintain post-visit care with patients while methods such as patient surveys keep patients engaged.

Post-care maintenance

Keeping patients engaged with their care throughout the entire patient experience is crucial when aiming for care plan adherence and better long-term outcomes. This post-care maintenance relies on putting systems in place to encourage and facilitate this participation.

Automating certain aspects of communication can go a long way in supporting this. When post-visit follow-up messages, referrals, and medication refills are automated, these steps are guaranteed, no matter how busy your office staff gets.

When practices guarantee that these processes are occurring, they’re not only ensuring that patients are being cared for post-visit with less input from physicians and staff, but they are one step closer to having a more comprehensive patient experience in place.

For more on establishing a successful post-care maintenance plan, check out this resource from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Patient feedback

Collecting and analyzing patient feedback is essential for identifying areas of improvement, addressing patient concerns, and enhancing the overall patient experience.

Implementing patient satisfaction surveys and feedback forms after appointments or care interactions provides valuable insights into patient perceptions and areas for improvement.

It doesn’t stop there. Collecting effective patient feedback enables:

• A greater understanding of patients by physicians
• Higher engagement and loyalty from patients
• An increase in reputation and online visibility
• The optimization of operations and services based on patient needs

With the immense wealth of benefits that come from implementing an effective feedback collection system, it becomes a must-have for any effective patient experience platform.

Why is care management important to overall patient health?

For a patient experience platform to be successful, it needs to support patients in ways that enable better overall health outcomes. To accomplish this, care needs to continue past the initial visit, all while effectively engaging patients.

Long-term care management can be supported in many different ways, such as:

• Through remote patient monitoring
• By integrating chronic care management
• By making payments as convenient as possible
• Proactively providing care using key population health analytics

Extending care past the visit

For care to extend long past the initial patient visit, systems must be put in place to assist with administering that care. Remote patient monitoring and chronic care management accomplish this by putting a framework in place to care for patients who are most in need of follow-up care, but who might have disabling or chronic health conditions.

The right remote patient monitoring system should be able to establish this framework without any additional staff needed from the practice.

Additionally, continuing care past the visit can involve proactively treating the community with the help of population health analytics. This valuable health data can inform a practice of the needs and underlying health concerns of their patient base and allows them to target them with screenings and other preventative measures.

Providing a better payment system

The cost associated with receiving care can be daunting to many patients. If the methods for paying that cost and taking responsibility for their care is obtuse or inconvenient, that can sour the entire patient experience and make patients second-guess staying with a practice.

This can be prevented by instituting automated statements to help patients stay on top of their bills in a timely manner, or through secure SMS payment links that provide patients with the ability to conveniently pay their bills on their phone.

These two options completely round out the patient experience. If done correctly and through a fully integrated patient experience platform, patients are treated to a convenient and intuitive experience with minimal need for anything but a smartphone.

To learn more about effective and engaging patient experience solutions check out the NextGen® Closed Loop™ Practice Experience, an all-in-one approach to making more meaningful connections. If you are interested in seeing if an improved patient experience platform is right for you, schedule a custom demo today!