The Importance of Quality
For patients, quality of care is far more critical than quantitative evaluations. The outputs of services delivered return as inputs when patients leave positive reviews. Such reviews increase a practice’s reputation and can draw in more patients.
Patient Visit Lengths
Since each patient’s time is valuable, you want to respect their time. Often, knowing whether to shorten or lengthen patient visit lengths depends on patient satisfaction. If your patients are frustrated with how long appointments take, shortening them may be necessary. On the other hand, you should consider taking more time with each appointment if patients feel rushed and misunderstood.
The traditional productivity metric with patient visit lengths is to keep them as short as possible so you can see the most patients per day. While brevity still matters, patients appreciate feeling understood and heard rather than rushed and dismissed.
Spending an extra couple of minutes with patients may seem counterintuitive from a productivity standpoint. Yet, it involves making the most of each appointment. Patients will feel that your clinic and staff do the utmost to care for patient health.
Either way, ensure each physician at your medical facility records patient visit lengths. Doing so helps determine whether you should shorten or lengthen appointments to enhance productivity.
Patient Wait Times
For patients, brevity matters most in the waiting room. Still, it’s better to shorten patient wait times through greater administrative efficiency than rushing appointments.
Making checking in and seeing a provider as efficient as possible for patients may be the best option. Focusing on administrative factors lets you shorten wait times without harming patient outcomes. To measure this factor, have staff record check-in times and the beginning of each appointment when the provider sees the patient.
Patient Satisfaction Rates
Patient satisfaction is the ultimate metric for qualitative productivity evaluations. Unless patients provide unprompted feedback, it’s often unclear how satisfied patients are with your services. Clinics without such information interpret data such as patient retention rates, missed appointments and wait times to determine patient satisfaction.
To measure patient satisfaction accurately, ask patients to provide feedback. Such feedback may come in questionnaires, direct interviews or email and text forms. Ask detailed questions about the quality of care patients receive, and leave room for additional comments.
Patient Retention Rates
Patients who are satisfied with your clinic’s services are more likely to return for follow-up appointments. Many factors influence patient retention rates. Some are outside your control, while others, like patient satisfaction, directly relate to the quality of care. Keeping track of patient retention rates through data analytics can give you insight into the quality of care your clinic provides. If you notice low retention rates, review patient feedback to diagnose the issue. Reasons for low retention rates can include long wait times or insufficient care quality.
Improve Productivity With Pathstone
At Pathstone, our healthcare consulting experts can help you improve financial and operational performance in healthcare settings without sacrificing patient outcomes. Contact us today to learn more about how Pathstone can enhance your productivity.
