- Why does better patient care matter to your practice?
- What is the number one way to improve patient care?
- Improving staff satisfaction to increase patient satisfaction
Improving patient care in 2021 can be a daunting task after a year like 2020. This year has presented unprecedented challenges for U.S. healthcare teams. The global pandemic placed a great deal of strain on the systems and staff that work in our nation’s medical practices, hospitals, and ancillary facilities – but it can be done.
Throughout this crisis, healthcare providers remained focused on providing the best possible patient-centered care. As we enter 2021, these organizations must continue their efforts to improve the patient experience by focusing on the one thing that matters most in patient-centered care – taking care of the providers themselves.
Why Does Better Patient Care Matter to Your Practice?
Patient satisfaction is increasingly important under value-based care models. Consumers can now see MIPS scores published by CMS and find doctor ratings on sites like Healthgrades. Higher out-of-pocket consumer costs have driven interest in finding the best value, yet highest quality of care for the money. One study showed that 65% of healthcare consumers are aware of online review sites and 36% use them regularly before making a healthcare purchasing decision.
Beyond the fact that providing high quality care is simply the right thing to do, today, patient satisfaction is a driver for revenue. Hospitals readmission penalties cost clinical facilities $563 million annually; in 2019 alone, Medicare cut payments to 2,583 hospitals. One hospital administrator was quoted saying healthcare providers put a lot of effort into reducing readmissions, “and the needle has not moved very far.”
Could this be because healthcare providers are focusing their efforts to improve patient care in the wrong place?
What is the Number One Way to Improve Patient Care?
We can borrow from the adage that a happy wife leads to a happy life, and apply it to the effort to improve patient care by saying, “happy staff, happy patients.” The quality of your healthcare practice is inherently tied to the satisfaction and happiness of your frontline care providers. While this idea is rooted in common sense, there is also data to back up the concept that, by taking better care of your staff, you will also take better care of your patients.
A Health Care Management Review study associated physician burnout with lower patient satisfaction and longer post discharge recovery time- Research in the JAMA Network correlated burnout with a two-fold increase in the odds for unsafe patient care, unprofessional behavior, and low patient satisfaction
- A Hippokratia study of more than 18,500 healthcare workers found, “most significant for patient satisfaction is employee satisfaction.”
These studies seem to point to the idea that taking better care of your employees means they will take better care of your patients. Interestingly, the idea for this was laid as far back as 2008, when the Annals of Family Medicine correlated the patient’s connection to and respect for their family doctor with their willingness to follow a medical treatment plan. There is research showing that a positive human connection between a patient and their provider seems to speed the healing process. That is what makes healthcare more than a clinical pursuit, but one also of caring for people.
If patient satisfaction is correlated with positive interactions with your staff, how can a practice begin to build a more positive patient connection at every clinical interaction? The answer lies in keeping your staff happy.
Improving Staff Satisfaction to Increase Patient Satisfaction
Skilled healthcare workers are highly in-demand. That means if they are unhappy in their work they are a flight risk. Employee turnover is a huge problem in healthcare; hospitals have turned over 87.8% of its entire workforce since 2014.
Healthcare turnover is second only to the hospitality field. Whether it’s a small solo practice or a large hospital network, turnover remains a huge problem for the industry. Turnover can negatively affect staff morale, provider revenue, and patient care.
Improving engagement and satisfaction in the job is crucial to turn these numbers around. How can organizations keep their healthcare workers happier, and in turn, improve patient care? It turns out, there’s plenty of data on that as well.
The current healthcare baseline metrics typically measures job satisfaction in five categories:
- The quality of the work itself
- The level and quality of supervision
- The relationship with coworkers
- Promotion and the chance for training and advancement
- Pay and rewards
Job satisfaction in the healthcare setting relates to many factors, including how the organization itself functions within the scope of the employee’s job description. For example, optimizing workflows for nurses to cut down on alarm fatigue or bringing in locum tenens to provide on-call duties when physicians struggle with burn out.
Allowing collective decision-making processes when possible and smoothing any communication friction between administration and frontline workers can also improve employee happiness on the job.
Gallup suggests that employee satisfaction in healthcare is about engaging your workforce in the success of the organization. They state, “Keep in mind that ‘engagement’ is more than whether employees like their jobs or are satisfied with their manager or benefits. Engagement measures if employees have an emotional bond and psychological commitment to their jobs and their employers.”
The studies show us that staff satisfaction correlates strongly with higher quality care. An engaged, satisfied healthcare worker will go the extra mile to communicate with patients and provide them with high quality care.
How can healthcare providers keep their employees satisfied? We believe there are five primary steps toward improving staff satisfaction:
- Solicit the feedback of workers and promptly address employee issues
- Reward best practices and support excellent work
- Pay appropriate compensation both in benefits and cash
- Create a professional mission-driven culture of care
- Invest in your staff with education that encourages professional growth
The best way to improve patient care is to focus on a happy team. Take care of your people and they will take care of your patients in 2021.
Making staff education a priority is a key tenet for employee satisfaction in the New Year. Insight Training Solutions offers customized workshops and on-demand training to help educate and engage your workforce. Find out how we can help you keep all of your customers—both patients and staff—satisfied. Contact us.