How Behavioral Health Professionals Can Improve the Patient Experience
As a behavioral health professional, you’ve committed your career to helping patients live healthy and happy lives. You want to provide the best possible patient experience, but you currently feel like you’re falling short.
You might not realize it, but enhancing the patient experience can come in many different forms. From changing the way appointments are held to making their time in your office more comfortable, here are a few ideas to increase patient satisfaction levels.
Invest in Telehealth Technology
In many cases, patients don’t actually need to visit your physical office location to receive care. Thanks to videoconferencing technology, you can connect with them from anywhere. This makes it easy for patients with hectic schedules or without reliable transportation to receive care. It also allows you to expand your reach to patients outside your local area, which can be especially helpful for those in rural areas where mental health practitioners are scarce.
Focus on Collaborative Care
Your patients’ mental health is extremely important, but it’s only part of their big picture. Team up with primary care providers to ensure patients receive a well-rounded healthcare experience. Shared care plans aimed to improve both their mental and physical health improve patient outcomes and eliminate the possibility of creating goals that contradict one another. Reducing the volume of assessments needed is easier for patients, and knowing they have a team working for them makes them feel empowered.
Create a Supportive Online Presence
In today’s tech-savvy world, patients expect behavioral health professionals to have a robust online presence. Features such as an informative website, helpful patient portal, and online scheduling allow current and prospective patients easy access to your practice, at their convenience. If you don’t currently offer much of an online experience, it’s time to step it up.
Elements such as the ability to schedule an appointment online, instead of having to pick up the phone, can make all the difference between a prospect choosing your practice or a competitor.
Minimize Wait Times
Your patients have busy lives, so they don’t want to spend more time in your office than necessary. If things like excessive wait times and mountains of paperwork consistently force them to be in your office much longer anticipated, many will opt to find care elsewhere. Improve their experience by giving them a call if you’re running behind and allowing them to fill out forms digitally. This ensures they’re spending the bulk of their time in your office seeing you, which is exactly what they want.
Make Your Office Warm and Inviting
No one wants to receive care in a cold, stark office. If you haven’t put much effort into interior design, it’s time to change that. People feel more comfortable opening up in a warm and inviting space. Things like comfortable furniture, warm colors on walls, and fresh flowers in the reception area put patients at ease and make your office a place they want to be.
Expanding your behavioral health team is a big move, but an exciting one. To learn more about how we can help you find top behavioral health talent, contact us today at (513) 651-9500 or by email at [email protected].
