DifferentKind enables your dental group to collect patient-reported experience and outcome data in an automated, timely way, giving you actionable insights to help improve patient loyalty and trust. A key component of this process is engaging the patient in the process to provide this data, and the quantity of data collected helps increase your understanding of the entirety of patient experience and outcomes in your practice. Below are three ways to improve patient engagement and response rate with your post-visit surveys so you can be maximally effective in making improvements that really matter.
Acknowledge You’re Doing Something New
People are generally very accustomed to being asked how their experience was shopping online, ordering a hamburger at their local restaurant, or staying at a hotel while on vacation. They are decidedly less accustomed to being asked if their hygienist involved the decision making about their care. It’s important to acknowledge that you’re doing something new (at least in healthcare) by asking for honest, transparent feedback to help your practice continually improve in what matters most. This can be done in a variety of ways - via patient portals, email, in-office signage (we have some that we can provide), or via 1-to-1 verbal communication. Whichever method(s) you choose to employ, your patients won’t be surprised after the visit when you’re asking them to provide insight and feedback about their care experience.
Share The Benefits to Both Your Patients And The Practice
Hearing directly from your patients is a gift, and obviously allows you to make improvements in systems necessary to provide a next-level experience for all of your patients every single time. But how does it benefit the patient? It’s important to not only collect data and to have an action plan to use the data for improvement, but to share those improvements with your patients.
This can be done via newsletters and the like, and it can also be done individually when following up on service recovery requests received via the DifferentKind dashboard. Patients know you’re not perfect, but they value striving for continual improvement. This benefits you via greater loyalty and fewer malpractice claims.
Ask
Often, an invitation from someone in the office to share their honest feedback is all someone needs to take the 30 seconds necessary to complete a post-visit survey. And to be clear, you’re not asking for a 5-star Google Review; you’re asking for their honest opinion to help you improve. These two things feel very different to patients.
So how might the above sound in practice? While the dental assistant is walking the patient from their chair to the front desk at the end of the appointment, they might share something like this, “Thank you so much for coming in today. We really value and appreciate you as a patient and would love your honest feedback on your visit. We’ll send a text within 24 hours asking for your thoughts, and would be grateful for any insights you could provide on what we did well today and how we can continue to get better.”
Bonus: Promote Your Successes with Your Staff and Your Patients
These two signs were at the front of the reception area when my son was in the hospital last year. The doctors and their care teams are motivated to have their name show up, and patients know the hospital is serious about providing an exceptional experience.
If you’re interested in learning more about how DifferentKind can enable your dental team to measure and improve the most important aspects of the patient experience, book 15 minutes to chat with us and see a demo here.
