Patient experience is not just about quiet environments, positive service scripting, or consistent rounding. At the end of the day, it is about the quality of actual nursing care provided to the patient.
Satisfied patients lead to higher profitability. When hospitals were ranked by profitability, the most profitable hospitals had the highest patient satisfaction scores.
Recent studies have also shown that:
- Personal experience is the top reason for selecting a physician or hospital.
- Customer service – translated to patient experience – is 2.5 times more important in healthcare than in other industries.
- Consumers are more willing to share a positive retail or banking experience than a positive healthcare encounter.
- Patients are less forgiving of a negative experience in healthcare than one in other industries.
- A satisfied patient shares his/her positive experience with 3 other people.
- The average dissatisfied patient will tell 25 others about the bad experience he or she had at the hospital.
- For every patient that complains there are 20 other dissatisfied patients that do not.
- And of those dissatisfied patients who don’t complain, only 1 in 10 will return.
- It costs 10 times as much to attract new patients as it does to keep current ones.
- Changing a poor customer service image takes about 10 years on average.
Considering these findings, it’s important for hospitals to take the impressions of their patients into account.
Question for Hospital Managers: What are you doing to improve patient experience ?
