Financial implications of poor Patient Experience
It is a known fact that financial performance, safety, and quality still occupy the top of priority list of healthcare center. But fortunately, many healthcare centers are now realizing that patient experience has a significant role in improving all the above mentioned priorities. For future business sustainability today’s healthcare center need to provide positive customer experience in offering quality products and services to its customers. The customer’s experience in a healthcare center affects the way the local community perceives the healthcare center and this reflects how well the business is running. The revenue improvement of a healthcare center should be viewed from patient’s perspective.
Financial performance of any healthcare center is a patient driven factor and its improvement completely depends on patient’s experience. Even a single negative experience matters because though the customer might have had many previous positive experiences with the healthcare center than negatives, the later always makes a deep long-lasting impact in the customers mind. This means that every single experience counts and a single negative experience results in negative marketing. Customers keep changing or choose their providers/healthcare center depending on their previous experience. The quality of relationship shown by the healthcare center is the major predictor of patient’s loyalty. Making sure that the customers are happy and satisfied really makes a big difference, than the management realizes, on the financial outcome of a healthcare center.
The center for Medicare and Medicaid services is considering including the results of PEM survey as a part of pay-for-performance program. To sustain in the current competitive market every healthcare center should ask themselves – What are we doing to deliver a positive experience to customers as our revenue depends on them? It would not be wrong to say that patient relationship or customer experience has become a business requirement.
