Ajay Prasad is the CEO of GMR Web Team, a full-service healthcare digital marketing agency focused on patient acquisition and retention.
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Healthcare consumers have always taken the time to research and explore their options for finding and scheduling medical services. However, time and technology have changed how consumers make their care decisions today. Digital patient experience now plays a bigger role in their selection of a new provider or caregiver.
To stand out in the market, practitioners have no choice but to deliver healthcare access in accordance with consumers’ changing preferences. Those who fall behind in enhancing and digitizing care experiences risk losing patients to their more up-to-date competitors.
What Is The Digital Patient Experience In Healthcare?
Digital patient experience comprises the technology-powered interactions that patients have at every point of the care journey. To be more effective with the strategy, providers should strive to match healthcare consumers’ online behaviors and expectations. It does impact patients’ perception of the care experience, which today spans multiple touchpoints.
Why Is the Digital Patient Experience Now More Important Than Ever?
Studies show that consumers prefer and are increasingly using digital means to access healthcare. As such, providing a quality patient digital experience will help you attract and retain patients. Not only does satisfying patient expectations make practices look good, but it can also make them the preferred provider in their location.
About 60% of consumers do research online when they want to find a new provider. A similar percentage checks out a practitioner’s website before selecting a physician. There’s no arguing that healthcare providers without an improved online experience often lag in attracting and retaining patients.
How To Enhance The Digital Patient Experience In Healthcare
To help grow your practice, enhance the patient digital journey with these key elements that consumers prefer today:
• A Robust Online Presence
Healthcare providers must make their web presence count by addressing consumers’ priorities. You have to provide good and comprehensive information because 71% of prospective patients will use it when deciding between your practice and competitors.
Also, review and test your website’s search tool. Is it easy to use and quick to spot across all pages? About 55% of consumers expect a smooth experience using this feature to look up specific information or services on healthcare websites.
Another way to enhance the digital patient experience is by having a mobile-optimized website—an essential deciding factor for consumers looking for medical information or services online. A site with excellent navigation, readability and other functions can help you satisfy digital healthcare access objectives such as check-in management and patient monitoring.
And finally, cast your online net wider by making your practice’s website inclusive and accessible to all. Depending on the local communities you’re targeting, that may entail accommodating various language preferences on your site. You can also include individuals with special needs in your growing online customer base by incorporating screen readers for visually impaired patients.
• Online Appointment Scheduling And Cancellations
The penchant for online appointment scheduling among healthcare consumers has been rising steadily over the years. It’s no longer enough to showcase your clinical expertise—more patients than ever prefer the convenience of digitally booking your care services. It’s something that some individuals will look at before choosing a provider, so you should make it part of your practice’s digital patient experience.
While the time isn’t ripe to ditch phone booking altogether, this traditional method has been gradually waning in popularity in the healthcare sector. Therefore, allowing patients to book and cancel appointments online is one way to futureproof your practice as healthcare consumer preferences continue to change.
• Telemedicine Services
Virtual care allows patients to engage with their doctor and receive care remotely instead of in person. Telemedicine services, which saved the day for many patients and healthcare providers during the pandemic, are an important part of the expected digital patient experience. Practitioners should be ready to provide them with on-demand care, increasingly impacting how modern consumers interact with their primary physicians.
To make life easier for your clients with telemedicine, consider providing a smartphone application for remote services instead of just a website. It doesn’t have to be a complicated resource to provide superior digital experiences. A patient-friendly app with a couple of essential features—like quick access to test results, looking up care services and messaging the practitioner—can make a significant difference. Instead of patients pushing back routine care when in-person appointments are unsafe or impossible, they can be seen on demand with telemedicine services.
• Digital Engagement
The quality of digital engagements you provide can impact patient experience, your reputation and the bottom line. According to a 2020 report by Cedar, about 28% of patients left their provider due to poor digital health experiences the previous year. Nonetheless, if they liked the quality of online interactions offered, about 65% said they would write a positive online review, which 98% of patients said influenced their choice of provider.
To be on the safe side, doctors or dentists should streamline all engagements throughout the patient’s digital journey. Financial touchpoints merit serious consideration today as they’re a major pain point for many healthcare consumers. For instance, most patients want a better, straightforward billing process that includes an online portal and text-based payment options.
These factors can determine whether patients will come back to you in the future. Consumers are already enjoying online shopping and other services, so it’s no surprise they expect similar experiences with healthcare. By providing a smoother digital patient experience, you can increase your practice’s customer acquisition and retention rates. However, don’t limit your practice’s growth potential by only digitizing or improving a few parts of the care journey. Patients expect superior healthcare experiences end to end, and practices must deliver the same to avoid losing valuable prospects to local competitors or even national virtual care providers.
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