Looking To Improve Patient Satisfaction? Start With Your ED—and These 2 Communications Goals

June 25, 2015

When patients come to your hospital for services, do you take the time to spotlight your organization’s strengths and let them know how much you value their health and well-being?

You should be marketing not only to prospective patients, but also to current patients when they come to your facility; you want them to know you care about their experience. In fact, the most successful hospitals today view every encounter in the facility as an opportunity to reinforce the message that the patient matters and that the hospital staff takes pride in delivering high-quality care that leads to best outcomes.

How can you implement or improve these messages at a single hospital or across an entire health system?

Your Emergency Department (ED) is a good place to start, according to Joyce Converse, Senior Vice President at Soyring Consulting, a St. Petersburg, Florida-based full-service agency that works with an array of health care systems across the country.

“The patient satisfaction score is 30 percent of the hospital score that influences the potential level of either incentive/bonus or reduction in Medicare payments to an organization, while the other 70 percent of the score is related to compliance with basic clinical standards of care and patient outcome,” Converse explains.

Converse says the key to how patients perceive their care really comes down to a matter of how well your facility communicates with them. she suggests health care organizations strive for two major communication goals. To learn what they are, as well as how to get to the bottom of what patients really think about your facility, read our new article: Try These Communication Strategies in Your ED to Increase Your Patient Satisfaction Scores.

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President