A successful patient experience is essential to overall patient satisfaction and the success of your dental practice. Today's patients want an experience where safety, clarity of information shared and the human relationship are paramount, since they are in no way qualified to judge the quality of care. Excellent communication between staff and patients, whether before, during or after the consultation, is essential to providing quality patient service. With advances in technology and healthcare services, it's important for dental practices to keep abreast of the latest trends and technologies.
By offering these services to your patients, you'll be able to take your dental practice to the next level in terms of patient experience. Here are some tips for rethinking the patient experience in your dental practice.
Understanding the patient journey to improve it :
Before thinking about it, it's essential to understand that the patient experience is made up of all the contact points, interactions and situations experienced by your patient. From research to care, from making an appointment to welcoming the patient, from explanations during the consultation, understanding the patient's journey is an essential first step in improving the overall experience we deliver.
While in our personal lives we expect professionals to deliver a smooth, clear and positive experience, patients today have the same expectations of their healthcare consultations.
It is important to note, however, that the patient's perceived experience is not an assessment of our care expertise. However, for the same level of care, a positive experience is likely to generate a repeat visit or recommendation. Conversely, an excellent dentist offering a negative experience may significantly reduce his or her chances of seeing patients again.
Finding and booking appointments :
The patient's journey begins with the first interaction they have with your dental practice: a phone call, a visit or even a search on the internet by reading your website, your doctolib sheet or your social networks. When designing the latter, it's important to understand your patients' research mindset, their expectations and the specific needs each patient faces. Once you understand how each patient interacts with your dental practice, you can start to put in place processes and tools to improve its overall visibility to your future patient base.
In particular, you may want to consider investing in digital tools such as tele-consultation or online scheduling applications. These tasks may seem time-consuming, but you can automate them. By automating these tasks, staff have more time to devote to improving the patient experience, while patients have less stress trying to remember when their next appointment is or whether they need follow-up care after their visit.
During the care process: use patient-centred systems
During the care process, it's once again important to think in terms of patient-centered organization and systems. While you are focused on the quality of the care you give your patients, the perception of the patient experience will focus on the appearance of your practice, cleanliness, organization, reception, waiting time and the time and attention you give them.
Indeed, one of the most important aspects of the patient experience is the few minutes you spend with your patient before or after the chair visit.
Communication is key to maintaining a high level of engagement with your patients. So you need to ensure that your messages are clear, consistent and complete, so that your patients can easily interact with you without confusion or uncertainty. A tool like Allisone which allows you to highlight features on a dental X-ray, is a good tool to help your patients visualize, locate and understand their dental issues. Its educational sheets also help your patients to understand and project themselves into the care you offer them.
By providing patients with oral health information, advice on preventive care and other relevant topics, you give them the knowledge they need to make better decisions about their oral health. This type of education goes far beyond a simple exchange of information, reducing the number of unnecessary appointments due to avoidable problems, providing a more personalized touch that helps build trust between practitioner and patient, and creating a sense of well-being in patients who are more likely to recommend your practice to others.
Post-care: keep in touch and show them that their opinion counts
Post-first consultation or post-care, multiply the points of contact (e-mail, SMS reminders, patient access) to ensure transparent communication between you and your patients. Not only will this keep your patients informed about the care they need, it also creates many opportunities to communicate directly with them and encourage them to continue their care.
Secure patient portals can help streamline operations and make communication more efficient. What's more, it can also help create a better experience for patients, as they can take an active part in managing their oral health with tools such as automated reminders, access to a secure portal for viewing dental care and billing documents, and even the ability to book appointments online 24/7 .
A successful patient experience begins even before a patient arrives at the dental practice and continues until after he or she has left. To provide a positive experience for your patients, you need to think of it as an asset that parallels the quality of your care, which of course takes priority. However, modernizing the patient experience doesn't have to be an insurmountable task. There are many simple, intuitive systems to implement that will make all the difference. Whether it's investing in digital tools such as online planning applications, teleconsultation or automated information transmission, remember that consistent, compassionate, educational and transparent communication with your patients is the most important element in enabling them to adhere, with confidence, to the treatment plans you suggest.
