Patient engagement is one of the key performance indicator for any hospital or clinic business as well as for the individual healthcare practitioners. As improving your patient engagement is important, here are 10 ways to improve it in a scalable way.
1. Keep Information Simple
Healthcare sector uses jargons and complex terms when doctors communicate with patients. But there is another way to communicate with patients and engage them more actively. That is the use of sharing information in a simple manner. Doctors should practice it when they have to share details with patients. Also, keep medical information at one place too with the help of cloud based medical records.
2. Be as Specific as Possible
It has been seen many doctors beat about the bush without getting to the relevant points. This practice affects patient engagement. Doctors and health professionals should guide patients how they can improve their health, what they need to do, what to avoid and such other important and specific things.
3. Involve Patients in Goals
As doctors set rules and recommend treatment or medicines, patients should be engaged. For example, doctors should ask a heart patient about what things they are comfortable with and what irritates them. The patient goals should be set in consultation with the patients themselves. They will become more practical.
4. Keep Everyone on the Same Page
Staff within the hospitals should be on the same page. All doctors, nurses, management staff as well as anyone who is a part of the hospital should have the same objectives. They should cooperate and share information with each other.
5. Share Information
Hospitals need to have a system that makes information sharable such as cloud based medical records. It is the need of the modern day. Information sharing systems save a lot of time, help staff provide patients with instant and better facilities and deal with emergency. Sharing information like medical images and reports can be improved for better patient engagement.
6. Set an Accountability System
Everyone part of the hospital should be accountable for their actions and projects. The sense of accountability motivates employees that further leads to better patient engagement. The purpose is to provide patients with better healthcare services and this starts when staff is trained and is accountable.
7. Engage Patients in Decision Making
Not many doctors involve the patients when it comes to decision making process. Though, doctors decide everything but patients can be asked. This is a fine way to improve patient engagement in the healthcare sector and make them more responsible about their healthcare.
8. Offering Support to the Patients
Support is inevitable. Hospitals need to have a supportive system where everyone desires to help out the patients and provide them with support – cloud based medical imaging storage solutions can also help in it as the information will be easy to retrieve from anywhere. This develops a positive sense of care among the patients and they can be further engaged.
9. Personalize the Experience
Patient experience should be improved at all levels. From admission to emergency help to proper care- the nurses and staff should focus on improving the patient experience with their hospital. It is an easy and practical way.
10. Increase Convenience
Any hurdles in the way of patients, offering them treatment should be removed. The care system should be improved so that patients get treatment, medicines, tests and reports with ease. This improvement will drastically increase the patient engagement at all levels.
