4 ways to increase patient satisfaction while improving market share

How satisfied a patient is with their healthcare provider goes far beyond the care they receive. From the first interaction, every encounter can contribute or take away from their experience and it’s up to care teams across healthcare to deliver the quality care patients expect with a modern and thoughtful approach. To increase patient satisfaction – and stand out against competition – some specialty and retail pharmacies, health systems, and other providers use the following four strategies.

1. Reduce administrative task time

Traditionally, pharmacists spend about 33% of their time on administrative tasks, with most of that time focused on conducting patient medication history interviews and some time spent on assessment and evaluation as well.

However, there are systems and processes that can speed up how patient information is gathered. When patient medical history is made readily available at the point of care, pharmacists and other providers gain more time to dedicate to the patient interaction and increase patient satisfaction. Time spent on administrative tasks turns into time focused on speaking to the patient about their pre-existing conditions and medication adherence, or thoughtfully answering their questions.

2. Improve patient experience and retention

Consider your own healthcare experience for a moment. Are you more likely to reengage with a provider who took the time to go over all your treatment details, or the one who didn’t give us much attention to your needs and concerns? Most patients will choose the first option, but the unfortunate fact is not all providers have that type of time to give even if they’d like to.

Data can help care teams do more for their patients. For example, integrated, real-time access to primary source data gives providers the actionable information they need to deliver a quality interaction every time. Over time, this contributes to a strong patient-provider relationship, leading to better retention.

3. Increase visibility into patient health history

While spending focused time with the patient is important, it doesn’t replace having a clear understanding of the patient’s health history. However, it’s much easier for a provider to see the data they need when it’s presented in a single, standardized format as opposed to searching through multiple clinical files, referral records, and portals.

Having one source of truth turns wasted time and provider frustration into clear visibility to the patient condition. The ability to see patient script fill rate, other prescriptions available, and any allergies or other conditions all within a few seconds takes the guesswork out of assessing the patient’s needs, allowing providers to deliver the care each unique situation requires.

4. Identify and address gaps in patient care

The final way to improve patient satisfaction in healthcare is to address more than the initial scope of treatment when applicable. For example, if a patient visits a pharmacy for a certain prescription, but the pharmacist is able to see that the patient has multiple prescriptions in their health history, the pharmacist can have a conversation with the patient on that gap in medication adherence. They may help the patient discover a possible alternative, encourage the patient to revisit their prescribing doctor, or at the very least, save the patient an extra pharmacy visit (to a competing provider) if the remaining prescriptions are something the patient desires to continue.

These ripple effects created by better access to more data go beyond the patient experience. They can proactively improve the patient’s health outcomes while reducing the steps it takes for providers and patients to make those improvements.

Take the first step in increasing patient satisfaction and improving market share

Interested in learning more about these strategies and how data plays a role in helping providers increase patient satisfaction?

Check out our recent on-demand webinar that goes into detail about how our real-world, longitudinally linkable dataset is helping providers improve patient care with real-time, actionable data access.

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