Did you have a chance to read the 2019 Accenture Digital Health Consumer Survey?
The survey asked 7,993 “consumers” — read “patients” — the following question: “How important are the following factors in determining your satisfaction with the healthcare services you receive?”
And?
Regardless of gender, location, or age, the top three factors influencing patient satisfaction are: (1)
- Cost of the treatment, at about 73% overall;
- Transparency of care, around 72% overall; and
- Transparency of cost, rounding out at 65% overall.
We’ll save the first factor — cost of treatment — for another time. For today, though, we want to dissect what it really means to be “transparent” in your services and your pricing — and why making your services and your costs transparent ultimately impacts your business’s bottom line.
Why Should Healthcare Providers Care About Patient Satisfaction?
Before we even get to how to improve patient satisfaction through transparency, we should talk about why you should even care.
After all, it seems like a very touchy-feely, nice-to-do-if-you-have-time sort of “extra” service for many resource-strapped clinics.
However, research has shown over and over again that healthcare providers that care about patient satisfaction:
- Enjoy increased profits — despite external drops in funding through Medicare or insurance company cuts; (2)
- Have patients that seek out more healthcare services and spend more money on their health overall; (3) and
- Increase overall patient returns and word-of-mouth referrals. (4)
Moreover, practices that don’t prioritize patient satisfaction:
- Are three times more likely to have a patient drop out of their treatment early; (5)
- Lose over $400,000 in lifetime revenue per lost patient, on average; and (6)
- Increase their chance of fighting malpractice lawsuits by 27.1% for every “drop” in satisfaction. (7)
We have a complete list of studies and statistics supporting the link between improved business outcomes and patient satisfaction, if you want to know more.
For now, though, we hope you’re on board with our philosophy that patient satisfaction is crucially important — for both health outcomes and business outcomes.
So, if patient satisfaction is so important, then it stands to reason that every healthcare practitioner — big or small! — should focus on how to increase the likelihood that a patient will be satisfied with their care.
That brings us back to “transparency.”
How to Show “Transparency of Care” At Your Clinic
In the Accenture report, the second-most important factor for patient satisfaction was “transparency of care.”
About 73% of respondents said that factor was either “critically important” or “very important” with their satisfaction. (8)
It stands to reason, then, that transparency of care should become an important, ongoing philosophy for any practice that wants to succeed.
But, what exactly do they mean by “transparency of care”?
In this instance, “transparency of care” means that patients can know what’s going on with their care, understand why these actions are being taken, and on board with the end goal of the treatment.
The Accenture survey offers “what test will be conducted, and why” as an example of transparency of care, but let’s take it a step further with your own physical therapy practice.
Therapists can show transparency of care by:
- Walking a patient through their particular diagnosis to show how this issue with their muscles, joints, or bones causes these specific complaints;
- Determining the intrinsic motivation of their patients, and showing patients how their exercises and complete therapeutic program contributes towards their personal patient goal;
- Explaining the science of how the exercises work and why they’re helpful for a specific patient complaint — not just how to physically do the exercise and expect compliance; and
- Offering additional resources and research to support the therapist’s overall approach and rationale for a patient’s unique course of treatment.
While some forms of transparency will take more resources and time than others, you can get started on making your care more “transparent” today by:
- Including research and articles on your practice website that show how your practice’s approach is safe and effective;
- Taking the time to talk about what brings patients into your clinic during intake — not just stopping at a doctor’s referral;
- Customizing HEPs for each patient to show the desired modifications and areas of focus that generic exercises can’t; and
- Making yourself available through private, secure channels for any patient concerns or questions.
How to Show “Transparency of Cost” At Your Clinic
While we’re putting off the cost of treatment discussion for another time, we still need to address how “transparency of cost” contributes to patient satisfaction.
After all, according to the Accenture survey, 65% of surveyed patients said that “transparency of cost to [them]” was a “critically important” or “very important” factor that influenced whether they were satisfied with a healthcare service. (9)
The report offered the simple example of “cost is known beforehand,” but again — there are more involved ways that you can promote transparency of cost throughout your entire practice.
- If cash-based, show your rates on your website so patients can immediately get an idea of how much their course of treatment may cost.
- If you accept insurance, then list every insurance plan that you accept on your website, along with how your clinic typically bills your treatments to that carrier. (We suggest an FAQ-style accordion format for that list, to allow for skimming and further detail when needed without clogging up the page.)
- If you accept insurance, offer an average out-of-pocket cost for different insurance carriers that your practice has
- If an external vendor bills your services — or you’ve just transferred to a new clinic with a new billing structure — then make a point of learning the basics of how billing works. It will help when your patient asks you questions during intake.
- Make a brochure reviewing your general billing structure, possible out-of-pocket costs, and what different common terms across insurance carriers mean. Many insurance providers offer a basic summary of their various plans either on their website or as a downloadable packet. Once collected, you can hire a freelancer to compile all the information into simple, easy-to-understand formats.
In the end, you want to make sure that if there’s some sort of surprise expense for the patient, it’s not coming from your clinic. By doing so, you make yourself into a trusted ally of your patient.
In turn, that trust through transparency increases your patients’ satisfaction — and their loyalty to your practice for many years to come.
