Critical analysis of link between patient experience and financial performance

Source: https://rater8.com

The ultimate goal of any healthcare organization is to perform well financially and expand the quality and quantity of services they are providing along with replenishing the existing resources. Financial performance of any healthcare organization can depend on multiple factors like leadership, continuous improvement processes, investments, bad debts and a major factor that affects financial performance is patient experience.

Previously in my blog, I discussed what strategies can be utilized to improve collections from patients and reduce bad debt. Bad debts are usually related with patient satisfaction whereas in this section I will be correlating patient experience with financial performance. There is no doubt in that improving patient experience helps improve financial performance of healthcare organization. Overall patient experience can be determined by how well they received care from nurses, physicians and also other staff members, how well and quickly they were recovered from the disease and also how justified billings they received.

Patient experience encompasses all the interactions they had while they were being treated with all the members of the healthcare institution. According to one survey, over 50% of the patients agreed that they will switch their hospitals if they are victim of miscommunication and difficulty in reaching health profession by phone or email. Several measures can be utilized to relate patient experience with financial performance like Return on Assets, net margin and operating margin. In one survey of Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare providers and systems (HCAHPS), it was found that hospitals with higher patient ratings between 2008 and 2014 had 4.7% net margin compared to 1.8% net margin of hospitals with lower ratings.

There are several other studies that prove statistically that patient experience is related to financial performance of a hospital. Patient experience is determined by what patient’s value during their visit. Some might value the interaction with physician and other care providers while some other value safety parameters in place and some might value the quality of care provided with latest technology in place or not. Disassociated patients or patients with bad experiences are more likely to switch hospitals without any hesitation and even share their bad experiences with their relatives and friends and influence them in negative manner which further affects hospital performance. Common complaints that patients have are: improper communication with physician, long waiting times and complicated billings.

Some ways to improve patient experience:

According to me the best way out of all to improve patient experience is to provide value-based care. Providing patient-centered care and being able to track your patient needs will exemplify patient experience exponentially. There are many advocates for pay-for-performance and believe that it will help improve patient experience. It ensures that physicians strive to provide better experiences to patients for a better pay. Other way to ensure patients have better experiences is to implement strategies for patient engagement. Increasing patient engagement give us more access to locate patients at any point in the revenue cycle and focus more on process improvement if more variations at any step in the revenue cycle like at claim filing is encountered and can be resolved.

Once improved, it will definitely improve financial performance of healthcare organization.