The patient care experience is everything when it comes to healthcare staffing. Because it is so important, it makes finding employees with patient care experience essential. Here are three reasons you need to emphasize patient-centered care experience in healthcare staffing.
When it comes to patient-centered care, much of it begins with engaging your patients and their families. In a healthcare setting, this often takes preventative care and avoids the early onset of serious illness. You can do this through large-scale outreach and educational programs to give patients the information they need to make informed medical decisions. Similarly, if you have a patient scheduled for a procedure, reaching out ahead of time with instructions and information can ease anxiety about the experience all around.
When you have this type of care in place, it instills more confidence in your practice. These days, much of this communication can be automated and digitized. You can send out emails or use your online portal to convey the information needed. Having someone on your team with this experience will know what it takes to engage your patients and how to get results.
Delivering outcomes that actually matter to your patients is an essential part of maintaining a positive experience for them. Work with your patients to identify what their healthcare goals may be. Then take the time to align the patient’s treatment plan with their personal goals. Oftentimes, a patient’s goals will include being pain-free or reducing side effects during treatment. Listening to the patient is key in delivering those things.
Another critical component of delivering for your patients is optimizing their diagnostic experience. Work to decrease the wait time for your patients to receive a diagnosis. Once the diagnosis is received, be sure you are timely in providing information and beginning a treatment plan. All of this can be helped along by implementing more technology in your practice. Diagnosis can be made less stressful with newer equipment and quieter machines. Delivering desired outcomes for your patients can also be made more accessible by using automation and decision support as well.
All of this will help you sustain patient loyalty within your practice, which is one of the biggest reasons why patient-centered care is essential in healthcare. Your patients need access to caregivers and want access to their information as well. Work to encourage your patients to educate themselves and live healthier lives. Once you get to know each of them, you can alter treatment and interaction based on their specific preferences. All of this will lead to a better overall experience with your practice and increase the likelihood of them being lifelong patients.
Working with a staffing agency can help you determine what is most important for you to find in new employees and search for a candidate that fits the bill. Timpl can assist you in finding someone with a patient-centered care experience for your company.