af Kushal Bansal 7 år siden
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Emphasis on patient experience has never been as important as it is today. Hospitals are going that extra mile from hiring consultants to having dedicated team to improve patient experience. Since there are a lot of options available to the patient along with payer and government policies linking reimbursement to patient satisfaction it is all the more important for providers to make sure patient and their families leave from the hospital smiling and satisfied. My name is Kushal Bansal and I have prepared this Patient Experience Mind Map for Customer Experience Management elective. With my experience of starting a hospital(ghcare.in) in India, I have realized that I need to develop better strategies that I can implement to give better experience to the patients visiting my hospital because they are my main stakeholders and everything revolves around my patients. Hence opting for this elective was a natural choice. Therefore, in this Patient Journey Map I talk about the patient's touch point with the hospital.
Like in the case of doctor, nurses and support staff have to be humble and listen to patients needs and help them immediately. Since they spend more time with patient, so it is even more important for them to be considerate about patient's condition.
Biggest problem over here is either a particular medicine not available or long queue at cash/ self check-out counter.
This process can be more efficient and of time can be saved if the patient has an app and he/she just selects the store they will pick the medicines from and at what time and fill in details about what medicines they want. When they reach the pack is ready since they already have made online payment. They just show doctors prescription which has a bar code. Person over the counter just scans and the patient leaves. This will save a lot of time of both the pharmacy and person visiting pharmacy. With the scan of bar code. it is easy to keep the track of patient details the work which otherwise would have been done manually. Moreover, if pre-order is made through app if there is a particular medicine is not their person could be sent a notification so that they can arrange some other place or by the time they reach pharmacy it is available.
Since everything move really quickly due to importance of time, patient might feel ignored or not complete information is provided or even worse might have to wait long to get treated. All this will lead to bad experience for the patient.
Probably the biggest irritant when it comes to patient experience is with respect to emergency department. Since everyone visiting the department are in pain and require immediate attention so the waits, which are very common, can seem very long. Therefore it is important to reduce the wait time to as minimum as possible. One way out is providing real time data to patient so that they can get to know how much time it might take and they can plan accordingly or go to a hospital accordingly, especially if the the problem is not very serious or life threatening. But if the problem is life threatening then Artificial Intelligence can be used to sort the patient in accordance with level or priority and treatment could be done in that order.
This is the most important part of the patient experience. With the number of patients increasing every day doctors are not able to give adequate time to each patient at times. But this will only lead to patient being not happy. First and foremost responsibility of doctor is to make the patient comfortable and treat patient as a friend who is their to help him/her. Next important step is to listen carefully to whatever patient says. This will make sure that patient builds the connection with the doctor and feels comfortable in sharing all the information about the problems they are facing.
As much as involvement of doctor is important during surgery it is equally important to make sure patient is taken care of post operation especially if he/she will remain in the hospital for couple of days. Constant monitoring and meeting patient will build the trust. While checking-out, doctors should make sure that all the questions are answered and the patient leaves without any doubts in mind.
One way to improve is by using 5S tool from Lean Thinking tool-kit. This will streamline the process and will reduce the errors which could otherwise be fatal. Here it is very important that friends and family of the patient are constantly updated. During the entire process they suffer the most because most often patient is under the influence of medicines but people who come along since they either don't have access to information or have limited access keep worrying and stay restless. This could be improved if regular information could be shared.
This is the first point of contact for patient with the hospital and politeness and a smile goes a long way. People at front desk shall have empathy towards patients and should do their best to help patients with all of their questions and needs.
As far as possible should be online with option of cash payment but also the option to pay in installments to decrease some immediate financial burden on patient and his/her family.
There has to be a dedicated team to help patient with any needs they might have. Secondly, there can a help button on a app so if the patient is some part of hospital and he/she just presses help button and someone reaches the spot to assist them.
Apart from having online booking, it will be better to provide real-time update so that patient does not have to wait and as soon as they reach they directly enter the doctor room for treatment.
