Elevating Patient Experience for Better Outcomes
How the patient experience affects engagement, communication, and health management
The impact of the patient experience in healthcare goes beyond HCAHPS scores. When patients have a good experience, they build relationships with the care team. They are more likely to be engaged in their health. They learn better and make healthy choices.
Importance of the Patient Experience
The patient experience covers all their encounters with the healthcare system. Not only does it correlate with the patient’s perception of quality, but it is also directly related to outcomes. Patients who have a great experience:
Get appointments quickly and easily
Find information easily
Have clear communication with their healthcare providers
Have a voice in shared decision making
Are treated with courtesy and respect
Receive individualized and culturally appropriate care
Are supported to self-manage their health
A review of studies found strong evidence that a better patient experience leads to better clinical outcomes.[1] Multiple studies evaluating outcomes after a heart attack found that patients who reported a better experience had better survival rates.[2],[3] It makes sense. When clinicians do things that promote a great experience — like communicating clearly, meeting a patient at their level to promote the best understanding, giving patients a voice, and supporting them in managing their health — they promote engagement too. Engagement is how patients take ownership of their care. Engaged patients are aware of what they need to do for good health and are equipped to make good choices.
Improving the Patient Experience in Healthcare
At its core, the patient experience in healthcare is a human experience. It is people taking care of people, making a difference during the most vulnerable times of their lives.[4] Personal connections are the key ingredient for an excellent patient experience, facilitating communication and helping patients feel cared for.
Clinicians, nurses, and staff are at the heart of these connections. They entered the healthcare field to help others and make a difference. They want to provide great care. But obstacles often make it difficult to do so. Leaders can’t improve the patient experience by simply telling staff to treat patients differently. Instead, they must investigate what barriers to providing an excellent experience exist in their organization and take steps to remove them.
6 Barriers to an Excellent Patient Experience
Health systems may face a wide variety of barriers to providing a great patient experience based on culture, resources, and infrastructure. Some common themes may include:
Access bottlenecks
Staffing shortages abound across the country and can extend to all levels of an organization, creating problems for patients accessing care. Identify the highest impact points to focus recruitment and solutions. The issue may not be as obvious as not having enough providers to see patients. There may be a shortage of staff to take phone calls and schedule appointments — a problem that could be remedied with self-scheduling options.
Time constraints
If staff members don’t have the time to communicate and connect with patients, interactions will feel rushed. Studies show that spending more time with patients leads to greater satisfaction.[5] This is an issue that is difficult to address when you are short-staffed. In addition to recruitment efforts, optimize processes and consider alternative staffing models to allow more time with patients. Look for ways to minimize interruptions during patient interactions in order to maximize the quality of the time spent with them.
Cumbersome electronic systems
When healthcare organizations run on electronic systems that are not intuitive and require many steps to complete tasks, it robs staff of time and creates stress and frustration. On the patient side, a poorly designed website or app interface makes it difficult to find results and schedule appointments — directly impacting the patient experience. Assess your systems for patient and provider usability and upgrade if users report difficulties.
No built-in follow-up
Systems for follow-up must be in place to avoid patients slipping through the cracks and missing needed care. This applies to follow-up appointments, phone calls, and result communication. Ensure your systems use intuitive reminders that are integrated into daily workflows so communication with patients is not missed.
A best practice is to schedule a follow-up appointment before patients leave the hospital or clinic. Research shows that patients who do not follow up with their providers within a week of hospital discharge are more likely to be readmitted.[6]
Poor-quality patient education
High-quality patient education motivates patients to make good choices and sets them up to be engaged partners. Examine your patient education materials. Ensure they are up to date and easy to understand. Patient Guide Solutions’ premium patient education materials were designed by bedside nurses for the best education experience.
Provide education in a variety of formats, including electronic and written materials to match patients’ unique learning styles. Sometimes, this means going back to basics. In one study, patients retained information best when providers sat at their bedside and explained written discharge instructions with a pen and paper.[7]
Language barriers
Nearly 42 million people in the United States speak Spanish as their primary language.[8] The patient experience should not differ because a person speaks a different language, but the reality is often far from ideal. Researchers analyzed Spanish-language translations and found that many had been translated into a college reading level.[9] This presents a critical barrier to understanding. If you use Patient Guide Solutions’ patient education materials, rest assured that readability is our highest priority, whether materials are in English or Spanish.
By learning about your organization’s current state and potential barriers to an excellent patient experience, you can make a difference for patients. Each organization will have a unique range of challenges and unique solutions to meet them. Committing to improve the patient experience is a commitment to better connections, and in turn, better outcomes.
Resources:
[1] Anhang Price R, Elliott MN, Zaslavsky AM, et al. Examining the role of patient experience surveys in measuring health care quality. Med Care Res Rev. 2014;71(5):522-554. doi:10.1177/1077558714541480
[2] Glickman SW, Boulding W, Manary M, et al. Patient satisfaction and its relationship with clinical quality and inpatient mortality in acute myocardial infarction. Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes. 2010;3(2):188-195. doi:10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.109.900597
[3] Meterko M, Wright S, Lin H, Lowy E, Cleary PD. Mortality among patients with acute myocardial infarction: the influences of patient-centered care and evidence-based medicine: Mortality among patients with acute myocardial infarction. Health Serv Res. 2010;45(5 Pt 1):1188-1204. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6773.2010.01138.x
[4] Patrick O. Understanding the Patient Experience: A Conceptual Framework. Am J Qual Care. 2020;7(6):906-910. doi:10.1177/2374373520951672
[5] Gross DA, Zyzanski SJ, Borawski EA, Cebul RD, Stange KC. Patient satisfaction with time spent with their physician. J Fam Pract. 1998;47(2):133-137. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9722801/
[6] Wiest, D., Yang, Q., Wilson, C., & Dravid, N. (2019). Outcomes of a citywide campaign to reduce medicaid hospital readmissions with connection to primary care within 7 days of hospital discharge. JAMA Network Open, 2(1), e187369. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.7369
[7] Townshend R, Grondin C, Gupta A, Al-Khafaji J. Assessment of patient retention of inpatient care information post-hospitalization. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2023;49(2):70-78. doi:10.1016/j.jcjq.2022.11.002
[8] US Census Bureau. Nearly 68 Million People Spoke a Language Other Than English at Home in 2019. Published online 2022. Accessed November 3, 2023. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/12/languages-we-speak-in-united-states.html
[9] Gorrepati PL, Smith GP. Contrasting readability and availability of Spanish language with English language patient education materials. Pediatr Dermatol. 2021;38(S2):142-143. doi:10.1111/pde.14485
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