11 Ways to Improve Patient Satisfaction

Have you ever left a doctor’s office after an appointment and thought to yourself, “Wow, that was a pleasant experience”? Unfortunately, the majority of people don’t enjoy going to the doctor.

The impression you leave on your patients helps or harms your practice in a few ways. If their experience was exceptional the may brag about how awesome you were to their network, which works wonders for your word of mouth marketing strategy. However, if they’re dissatisfied the following will occur…

1. The dissatisfied patient won’t return

2. They’ll delay their payment

3. You’ll lose revenue

4. They’ll share their dissatisfaction on the social web

But as healthcare moves towards value-based care, practice owners and hospital administrators are starting to pursue higher patient satisfaction scores.

So how do you improve these scores for your organization?

Here are 11 ways you can use to improve patient satisfaction and why they’re important.

Conclusion

Some clients might have complaints regardless of what you do to make their experience more enjoyable. You can’t please everyone who walks through your doors. But you can cater the majority of your patients by implementing these steps. We hope you enjoyed this infographic.

Patient Satisfaction Statistics and Sources

1. The 50/70 rule is maintaining eye contact for 50% of the time while speaking, and 70% of the time while listening - Mobius MD

2. 30% of English speaking patients are unable to define simple medical terms used during appointments - Ayers Career College

3. On average, patients only have 11 seconds to explain the reason for their visit before the doctor interrupts them - Market Watch

4. 52.4% of patients forget about their appointments or forget to cancel the appointment - Simple Texting

5. 46.7% of medical practices that don’t send appointment reminders have an average no-show rate of over 10% - TeleVox Solutions

6. 38.1% of patients said that a text reminder would’ve helped them remember their appointment - Simple Texting

7. Only 3% of people actually fear going to the doctor, while a majority just fear the unknown - NBC News

8. Only 34% of Americans had confidence in medical leaders in 2018, compared to 75% in 1966 - Advisory Board

9. 24% of American patients don’t feel valued by their healthcare provider - TeleVox Solutions

10. Five star hospitals have an average wait time of 13 minutes, while 1 star hospitals have an average wait time of 34 minutes - xtelligent Healthcare Media

11. The average wait time for patients is 18 minutes and 13 seconds - MedCity News

12. About 33% of physicians spend 17-24 minutes with their patients - Statista 

13. 88% of patients say that being told in advance how long they’d be waiting would reduce wait-time frustration - Software Advice