If you want to boost your patient satisfaction scores, try investing more resources and attention in your clinical and admin staff.

Research demonstrates that improving employee engagement can boost patient satisfaction and other elements of the patient experience. Enhancing your employee’s experience results in:

• Higher patient satisfaction
• Improved call center efficiency
• Reduced turnover
• A greater bottom line

Today’s most successful healthcare organizations go all out to achieve and maintain excellent patient satisfaction scores. The financial rewards in achieving high patient satisfaction rates are clear: organizations that deliver a “superior” customer experience attain net margins that are 50% higher than healthcare organizations that provide “average” customer service.

Patients Notice Employee Dissatisfaction

Your patients recognize problems and negativity within your office—BIG time. While they may not completely understand the topic of discussion between team members, they are acutely aware of their environment, including any feelings of discontent or disrespect among employees.

Negativity permeates, and your patients are tuned in. Therefore, investing in employee engagement is fundamental to the overall success of your practice. Team members want to feel valued, appreciated, and that their opinions matter. Global studies reveal that 79% of people who quit their jobs cite “lack of appreciation” as their reason for leaving.

Overall, patient experience is one of the most critical factors contributing to your practice’s bottom line; 75% of patients now consult patient reviews as their first step in choosing a new doctor.

When you engage your employees, you achieve commitment to your medical practice, which translates into powerful results.

The Importance of Ongoing Training

A literature review report asserts that creating greater employee satisfaction has a “very desirable” outcome on patients, including increased patient satisfaction, enhanced quality of care, and higher patient loyalty.

When you help your employees feel engaged and offer them the support and resources they need to provide excellent patient care, they’ll be more satisfied with their jobs. This, in turn, results in loyal team members, which will dramatically lower turnover and enhance retention. Replacing and retraining an employee can be expensive. Direct replacement costs can be as high as 60% of an employee’s annual wage, while the total turnover cost can run between 90% to 200% of a staff member’s annual salary.

Increasingly, medical practices are establishing partnerships with healthcare-focused training organizations to develop employee skills and provide ongoing solutions to engage, educate, and empower their teams. Partnering with these organizations enables large-scale retraining without creating the staff and overhead to manage it internally.

An effective patient experience training program for your employees can help you:

• Boost employee engagement
• Cultivate patient service mindsets
• Enhance your practice’s reputation
• Strengthen employee retention

Bottom line: your patients are more likely to return to your practice if they’ve had a positive experience. Furthermore, patients today increasingly shop for healthcare services, seeking the best possible overall experience when they require care. Leading medical practices and hospitals are increasing profitability by enhancing patient experience and satisfaction versus cutting costs.

Maximizing employee engagement and satisfaction has a direct positive effect on your patients’ overall experience, employee productivity, and your bottom line.