How does Employee Engagement Improve Patient Experience?

Listening to our customers within the healthcare industry, traditional patient experience goes something like this: Patient comes in, is greeted by the appropriate staff, and receives treatment. Here is where things diverge. Some practitioners employ the exit survey method, where the patient is given a multi-page paper survey on a clipboard while their post-treatment evaluation and discharge is processed. Others adopt a more ad-hoc approach, where staff ask patients how they are doing face-to-face so as to get a general reading of their experience. Some healthcare providers call or email patients days or weeks after a procedure, asking patients for their feedback over the phone or through an online survey.

If we were to ask you what is missing from all these collection methods, what would you answer? You could say that paper surveys might be too much for a recovering patient, or giving feedback over the phone might interrupt someone’s day. You could also say that the feedback isn’t in real-time, meaning there’s little to be done to boost the experience right then and there.

You’d be right, of course. But there’s one key element: In no way is the focus placed on the employee.

Boosting Patient Experience Through Employees

We can’t blame you for being confused. Isn’t the whole point of patient experience to place them at the center?

Yes.

But, studies show that more engaged employees leads to better healthcare. Employees that feel great about their workplace will put more effort, meaning your patients interact with happier, more engaged staff. This, in turn, spills over into their quality of care and their overall experience during their time with you.

Happier employees also bring in more profits. It is difficult for healthcare providers to differentiate themselves based on the procedures they perform – patients don’t care about the new and improved methodology for treatment, they only care if they feel better or worse. The only way providers can differentiate themselves from competitors is by providing great service, which is why happier employees are a must.

Take it from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the UK. They’re measuring employee feedback in a way that helps them see threats to the patient experience before they arise. They continuously capture feedback from employees at each hospital department, and continuously discuss the feedback with department leaders. Analyzing the employee feedback, Hospital management discusses success factors with the top performing departments, and comes up with an action plan for underperforming departments. With employees feeling their feedback has an impact in their working conditions, they leave more of it, meaning the hospital can always provide exactly what they need. In doing this, employees are more motivated than ever to provide a stellar patient experience.

Related: Queen Elizabeth Hospital Case Study

Unifying Patient Experience with Employee Experience

Measuring both employee experience and patient experience isn’t a new concept. In fact, many healthcare providers do so already. The challenge is to measure them in a synchronized manner. If your employee satisfaction data is older than your patient experience data, or vice-versa, then what’s the use? Also, are you able to coordinate between different departments to come up with a unified action plan?

This is how Ombea can help. The Ombea platform makes it easy to capture data from any audience no matter the location – physically, online, or anywhere. Once this is done, hospital administrators can add users from the HR and Patient Experience departments into the platform, so they have a centralized working area. Insights are immediately visible on the dashboard, and are easily shareable with multiple users. This makes it seamless to measure both patient and employee experience, and the impact the one is having on the other.

Want to learn more? Get in touch and we’ll walk you through it.