How to Create Positive Patient/Provider Relationships

Creating and maintaining a positive relationship between patient and provider is the primary key to a successful healthcare practice. Since past few years, it has been seen that many healthcare practices and systems prioritize relationships with patients over cost and outcome measures, usually assessed through accessibility and patient- engagement and satisfaction metrics. Most of the healthcare practices believe this fact that just by building and promoting a strong relationship on an individual patient level, better outcomes and favorable costs will follow their self.

In this write-up, we will discuss few simple tips to create and strengthen a positive relationship between Patients and Providers to continue growing and flourishing a healthcare practice.

1) First impression is the Last Impression
All staff members of a hospital or clinic should be trained enough to ensure a better services to their new or existing patients all the time. They should be friendly, polite and genuine with respect to their behavior so that patients must always feel welcome during their first and the rest of visits at the clinical or hospital setting.

2) A positive communication is the key
Always keep a close watch on a person who attends the patient’s phone calls. Make sure the person must be polite, caring and kind. Remember, lack of positive communication skills can permanently break a new patient relationship. Therefore, a key component of patient retention and referrals is how a person represents your practice in every interaction.

3) Minimize the waiting time.
Mostly surveys conducted on the patients confirm that the patients have to suffer long waits due to various reasons such as waiting for a call to consult with a physician, and other clipboards and paperwork. Although it is difficult for the most of the practices to run on time all the time, but there are ways to control this problem such as by adopting advanced technology measures or PMS software.

4) A better resolution to customer’s complaint
A better resolution to a customer’s complaint is one of the best ways to build long-term relationships with the patients. Always make sure that you and your staff patients are following all needful guidelines to turn patient complaints into productive, positive interactions.

5) Build and maintain a positive online presence.
Just like attending patient’s complaints in-person and over-the-phone, it is always essential to attend online complaints to reveal your commitment and professionalism towards an outstanding care. Your hospital staff should be trained to follow-up and invite maximum online reviews at the end of a visit. Here, taking advantages of a suitable PMS system can do wonders with its powerful inbuilt review system to make the process much easier!

6) Get Referrals
Although there are numerous ways to generate referrals and retain patients, a simple and the best one is to ask for them. For e.g. post a business or postcard along with a suitable referral sign! Just by devoting a few extra minutes you can make a big impact on your practice development and reputation management.

7) Market Yourself
In a private practice, most physicians usually get involved in the same work routine all the time even for months. So it’s quite easy for physicians to get bogged down at the end of the day. Although this monotonous work routine is unsustainable for physicians, one positive sign is that their practice remains busy to create a strong and viable referral network. So, physicians can select one day every three months to devote some time outside the clinic and visit physician groups in their area. This will help them to introduce their self and their healthcare practice to gain more referrals.

If time is your biggest constraint, then one of the best Practice Management Software ‘Medzsoft’ can help streamline your most time-consuming administrative and clinical processes as well as enhancing the patient engagement and empowerment.