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Health care leaders say keep it simple to optimize patient experiences

January 24, 2024

On January 8, Press Ganey, a leading health care performance improvement solutions company, announced its 2023 Pinnacle of Excellence award recipients. Nearly 100 organizations were recognized for their consistently high levels of excellence over three years in employee engagement, physician engagement, clinical quality performance, and patient experience.

Hoag Orthopedic Institute in California and Dartmouth Health in New Hampshire were among those recipients. In a recent interview with Health Leaders Media, Steven Barnett, MD, chief medical officer of Hoag Orthopedic Institute, and Brant Oliver, PhD, MS, MPH, system vice president for care experience at The Value Institute at Dartmouth Health, cautioned physicians and health leaders from placing too much of an emphasis on new technologies and improved amenities. (Cheney, 2024)

"Like many other fields, patient experience has evolved over time and in some health systems it is positioned as part of a communications department, HR department, or marketing department," said Oliver. "In these health systems, patient experience efforts may be focused on improving the food in the cafeteria or having better televisions in patient rooms. Those things are helpful, but they do not target the main drivers of experience such as trust, confidence, communication, and responsiveness. So, one pitfall is to go after 'shiny things' rather than the practices that we need to focus on to optimize the care experience." (Cheney, 2024)

Those practices that optimize the patient care experience remain deceptively simple: clear communication, respect, and continuous improvement. Consider these practice and patient management tips to improve patient engagement in your practice this year:

Improve your patients' waiting process

While it would be nice to incorporate new technology and hire more staff, simple interventions can make big differences in patients' experiences in an office waiting area. For example, if appointments are running behind, ensure that patients know. Phone calls work, but if that’s not an option, choose a simpler approach.

Susan Y. Lee, M.D., FACP of Stony Brook Primary Care in New York said that her staff uses a simple whiteboard printed with physicians’ names and color-coded magnets to indicate timeliness: green signifies that visits are running on time, while yellow and red indicate that visits are running 15 and 30 minutes late, respectively. Support staff also regularly check in with patients while they wait. Lee refers to the group as the “waiting room concierge.”

Health systems should consider having a service like this, because I do feel that patients deserve this concierge service,” Lee said. “It’s very stressful to go to a doctor, and the waiting room is really a place of anxiety. I do feel that this helps.” (Payerchin, 2024)

Understand your patients' goals for the visit

Scott R. Laker, M.D., FAAPMR, senior medical director of CU Medicine at the University of Colorado, explains that his primary care groups have patients write down their goals for a visit on their intake questionnaire. The practice has been so successful that CU Medicine subspeciality groups have also adopted it. Goal setting allows physicians to gauge the time they have with patients and ensure they are addressing what is important to the patient. (Payerchin, 2024)

Equally as important as understanding a patient’s goals is recognizing a patient’s values and preferences. Oliver encourages physicians in his organization to respect patients’ diversity, culture, and backgrounds to deliver personalized care. “Oftentimes in healthcare, we focus on the right service the right medication, or the right diagnostic work, and those things are important. But if we do not know the patient’s preferences and what they value most, we will miss the target in trying to help them,” said Oliver. (Cheney, 2024)

Acknowledge new medical encounters

Review your patients' medical records, even if only briefly, before entering the room and be prepared to comment on ancillary medical appointments or tests. Lawrence refers to this as intentionality, saying that this simple act “[s]hows the patient that they are the focus of the visit, not just another number on an assembly line.” This also goes toward creating a relationship of trust and demonstrating that you are paying attention to your patient’s whole experience in health care, including the parts that occur outside of your office. (Payerchin, 2024)

Check your patients' understanding

Wrapping up a visit can mean communicating a multitude of information to patients in a short amount of time. To check their patients’ understanding and learn how they could improve the experience, Archana Radhakrishnan, M.D., and her group of physicians at Stony Brook Primary Care, created one-page sheets to fill out and give to patients between January and March 2023. The pages included sections for patients to note who they saw for their visit, any changes made to treatment plans, and any follow-up care that was necessary. Radhakrishnan used Press Ganey patient survey results from October to December 2022 as a baseline and then compared the new survey results. The group received better overall patient evaluation scores by using these simple homework-style discharge checklists. (Payerchin, 2024)

Sources:

Cheney, C. (2024, January 22). Health Leaders Media. Award-winning healthcare providers share keys to patient experience success. https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/clinical-care/award-winning-healthcare-providers-share-keys-patient-experience-success

Payerchin, R. (2024, January 8). Medical Economics. Creating a patient-centered practice: strategies for improving patient satisfaction and retention. https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/creating-a-patient-centered-practice-strategies-for-improving-patient-satisfaction-retention