The beginning of a new year is an ideal time to scrutinize your practice's image. One place to start is at your front door. What does a patient experience when he or she arrives? A first impression is an opportunity that never repeats itself. Are you doing all you can to give your patients the most positive first impression possible? Here are 10 tips that can make a big difference in your practice.
1. Hire the kindest, most sincere person you can find as your receptionist. The receptionist's attitude has a lot to do with how a patient experiences a medical visit. Consider the example of Williamsport Hospital and Medical Center in Williamsport, Pa. Administrators found that although the patient's encounter with the Emergency Department physician and nurse was important, it was the encounter with the receptionist that was most important to satisfaction. Improving that experience improved satisfaction ratings with the ED dramatically. Granted, an ED is not a family practice office, but the effect is the same. So hire the smile and teach the skills for this position. Also try not to overload this individual. Assigning too many duties to a receptionist can interfere with making patients feel welcome and comfortable.
2. Respect patient confidentiality. Patients should not have to state the reason for their visit when other people are present. Avoid sign-in sheets, especially the kind that ask for the patient's chief complaint. An alternative is to have numbered pads printed. The patient signs the top sheet, tears it off and gives it to your receptionist. The receptionist can then use this information in whatever way the sign-in sheets were used (e.g., to keep track of how many patients are seen, order of arrival, etc.).
3. Make sure your reception area is spotless. Cleanliness in the reception area is extremely important. People seek to confirm their first impressions. If the reception area furnishings are stained, patients will be checking to see if your examination room equipment is dirty, too.
4. Monitor your reception area materials. Airlines don't run movies that involve plane crashes, and you should think twice about displaying magazines with headlines such as “How I Made Millions Suing Doctors for Malpractice.” Also keep in mind that the tremendous amount of medical information in consumer magazines creates expectations for patients. For example, the October 1996 issue of Good Housekeeping contained an article titled “Breast Exam: Is Your Doctor Doing It Right?” A patient who read that article while waiting for you to do a breast exam might have wondered about your competence if you didn't do the exam exactly as described in the article. (Being familiar with such articles can also alert you to increased concerns about certain procedures or medications.)
5. Consider the impressions that signs in your office create. Do the majority of your signs pertain to insurance and billing rather than helping the patient feel comfortable? An example of a helpful sign would be one that says, “Please see our receptionist when you arrive.” A sign that reads, “Patients are seen in order of appointment, not arrival,” can ease tensions in a crowded reception area. Discourage staff from posting flip or inappropriate sayings in prominent places. A sign that says, “The worst day at the beach is better than the best day at work,” may relieve staff tensions but should be kept out of public view.
6. Be the first to say hello. Everyone in the practice should take the initiative in greeting patients. Don't wait for the patient to speak, because some patients will interpret your reticence as indifference. Use the patient's name whenever possible. Asking staff to review the schedule at the beginning of the day makes it easier for everyone to remember names. Also keep in mind that, while having staff members wear name tags encourages patients to ask the appropriate person for information and assistance, tags are not a substitute for a personal introduction.
7. Be prepared for the patient. Always review the patient's chart before entering the exam room. Your ability to know and remember information will impress patients. Social information, such as a spouse's first name, can help you make the personal connections that are important to many patients. One physician has discovered an effective way to start every visit. He makes a note of the last thing the patient says as he or she is leaving a visit. Glancing at the chart just before the next visit, he can recall that topic of conversation and introduce it at the start of the visit. “Did your daughter's team win the state championship?” This strategy makes each patient feel important. If a patient has been referred to you by another physician, saying something like “Dr. Verri and I spoke about you and she told me that ...” reassures the patient that his or her care is being coordinated.
Does this sound artificial to you? If so, think about this: You do care about your patients, right? But unless your memory is better than most, you won't be able to show your patients that you care if you don't give yourself some memory aids like these. There's only one of you, and there are hundreds of patients.
8. Put the patient at ease. Be alert to factors that might hinder physician-patient communication. One patient decided to look for another physician because his physician had a habit of talking with his back turned. Another patient opted not to return to a physician who greeted and examined her wearing a surgical mask. The physician never explained why he was wearing the mask, and the patient never asked.
9. Focus first on the patient's needs. Every member of your practice should use this strategy. When your receptionist asks about insurance first, before asking how the patient is feeling, an impression is created that you care more about the patient's insurance than his or her wellbeing. Early in the visit, find out what issue is on your patient's mind. It may not be the most significant problem clinically, but when you address this concern first, the patient can relax and concentrate on what you have to say.
10. Create a favorable impression in 60 seconds. The amount of time a physician spends with a patient contributes significantly to the patient's satisfaction with an office visit. In a busy practice, it's not always possible to dedicate as much time to a visit as a patient may want or expect. If, however, you give a patient your undivided attention for the first 60 seconds of your encounter, you will leave the patient feeling that he or she had a meaningful interaction with you — and not feeling that the visit was too short.
Editor's note: Baker expands on the points in this article in her upcoming book, Managing Patient Expectations, which will be published this year by Jossey-Bass Inc.
An organization or business either non-profit organization or profit-oriented public or private organization that render asset and facility management services to the healthcare industry which includes medical wards, sickness bays, healthcare facilities, hospital premises, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals/medicine storage areas, medical litters/used medical kits, etc. whilst providing a safe and hygienic environment to users such as nurses, doctors, outpatients, inpatients, staff, visitors and others is called a facility management services provider to the healthcare industry. Examples of such healthcare industry include central hospitals, retirement homes, nurseries and childcare centres, palliative cares, abortion clinics, rehabilitation centres and residential carers and others.
“Facility management (FM) is a profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality, comfort, safety and efficiency of the built environment by integrating people, place, process and technology.”
International Facility Management Association
In other words, facilities management is a means to people or building facility manager who are responsible for ensuring the smooth operations of the facility, people and buildings to enabling them to work together harmoniously. Facilities management prioritizes the cleanliness, saves money, provides employee safety, improves productivity and satisfies customers. In the healthcare industry, facilities management is an important key to keep the organization operate smoothly and safe whilst maintaining a healthy environment. Healthcare facilities management cares about the patients’ quality of life and saves patients from deaths. For instance, the hospital management maintains the medical facilities by preventing power or equipment failures so that there will be no interruption during surgical operations. These are the following factors on the importance of facilities management:
The patient’s first impression with hospital services and healthcare facilities plays an important role to win brand loyalty since the patients have the choices whether to use the hospital facilities or otherwise. Cleanliness, waiting time, employee friendliness, customer services, availability of friendly-user furniture and available healthcare facilities will define patients’ experience.
- Stress
The patient expects smooth experience, tranquillity and satisfying healthcare outcome because he or she has paid an expensive cost for good healthcare services. Facilities management must ensure the ambience and the services induces the patient’s feeling of safety, peacefulness and serenity when entering the hospital premises. Without such facilities management, there will be long queues for patients, the uncleanliness state of the medical centres and fears of diseases spreading and illness break lose which will deter people from coming to the hospital.
- Sight
Facilities management must create a positive impact and good impression in the eyes of customers in order to create a conducive human experience for patients and a feel-good factor as well. When a patient facing any difficulty such accessibility to the hospital, unwelcoming services, uninviting atmosphere, this will drive away any potential patients to the competitors. Therefore, cleanliness, welcoming attitudes of the staff, the easiness in finding car parks location and clear building signage are important factors to increase customer’s first impression towards hospital facilities.
- Sound
According to the Archives of Internal Medicine, intense noise levels can cause patients to lose sleep and slow their ability to heal. Facilities management can overcome this problem by installing medical device alarms and monitor the alarm occurrence to control the noises produced especially at night time or during emergency times. Another method adopted by some facilities manager either at nights or evenings is to dim the lights to create a quiet atmosphere and help patients to sleep. Healthcare industry considers controlling noises is beneficial to patients as it reduces patient stress, fatigue and improves satisfaction.
- Smell
Bad odours make a healthy person feel stress, moody and dizzy with nausea sometimes, thus, on sick people, it will be double even triple depending on the sickness they are in. Therefore, it is important for the healthcare facilities management to take great action in taking care facilities ventilation. Pleasant odour creates welcoming customer experience as it increases patients’ or visitors’ good mood and feeling of happiness. The scent creates freshness, cosiness and encourages openness feelings especially in a crowded atmosphere which helps to reduce anxiety levels and improves patients’ recovery at faster times.
- Taste
Facility manager in the healthcare industry should be able to cater to new meals options and keep updating the menus on a continual basis as well as improving on meal presentation to the patients. Their services should include sending the meals to the patients’ rooms that emphasize on nutritional value, minimal food wastage, affordable meals and increasing patients’ satisfaction. Tasty and high-quality foods will encourage patients to get enthusiastic about eating hospital meals.
Healthcare facilities need to focus on managing waste flows and efficient water consumption for better integration between the hospital in its environment. They could create a friendly visual and educational design on the facilities such as litter bins aims to raise awareness on cleanliness for a start whereby eventually, people start to change behaviour to throw litters and lesser work for staff to collect litter. An informative instruction guide explanation help on how to use smart bins and cartoon dustbin with cartoon face as well as logo signage help people to utilize it.
Facilities management can help to coordinate patients’ room data, medical facilities, building equipment, security, cleanliness and maintenance. The healthcare industry top priority is to deliver the best care service, ensure safety and hygiene for patients. For example, with an automated technology metrics, it allows the employees or the facilities manager to receive real-time alerts, customer feedbacks, electrical energy consumption and other information through smartphones. Emergency lighting in facilities management preventive maintenance is very important to ensure that all the emergency light to check the functionality on a monthly basis. Replacement of such energy light should be done whenever there is faulty of light bulbs in healthcare. Emergency lighting in facilities management preventive maintenance is very important to ensure that all the emergency lights are to be checked on its functionality on a regular basis. They should be ensured to be in working order at all times. Replacements of such energy lights should be undertaken whenever there are faulty light bulbs or whenever their life cycles indicated that they are required to be replaced.
One of the facilities management’s objectives is to avoid spreading of bacteria or viruses in the hospital building that will affect patients and hospital staff well-being. For instance, the medical centre management needs to ensure that employees are trained using UV lights when required and safeguarding the UV lightroom to operate patients. The medical facilities managers will regularly check on operating rooms and keep track of whether the rooms or equipment tools were disinfected at all times. Healthy people can be easily contaminated with germs, bacteria and virus from infectious diseases which are easily contaminated in the hospital building especially to a less resistance immune system patients or employee workers, seniors and newborn babies. Thus, proper anti-septic cleaning maintenance services could remove the microorganisms in the air coming from the wardrooms. Installing a good ventilation system and frequent change of the filters will prevent airborne diseases in the air from spreading and also helps to clean the purified air from dust and other microorganisms. Atalian Global Services offers bio cleaning, a combination of cleaning, utilization of disinfection and remove waste or contaminated item in order to decrease the biological contamination.
The hospital care centres shall be free from encumbrances and liabilities especially from legal suits from the third party. They are liable to pay hefty compensations for any acts of negligence on injured patients during treatment. Any negligent actions caused by hospital employees, doctors, nurses and the facilities management during the treatment of patients will be subjected to legal liabilities and claims. Therefore, the facilities management should ensure that all medical facility and assets are properly maintained and comprehensively serviced by a professional team to prevent such lawsuits. A well-maintained medical centre regularly improves communications, patients’ safety care, building maintenance and minimise the risks of legal costs.
Finally, we at the Atalian Global Services offer the best professional facilities management to all medical assets and facilities at optimum levels at all times. We also comprehensively maintain hygienic cleanliness while ensuring a healthy environment for patients, staff and others. Do contact us today; we provide alternative solutions to facilitate the healthcare industry with no more worries from you!