The healthcare system is a dynamic landscape where products and services continually progress, yet there is a constant: the significance of a positive patient experience. It goes beyond mere transactions; it involves forging relationships, comprehending needs, and crafting moments that have enduring impacts.

In our first 'Expert Series' interview, we delve into a subject that tops every company's strategic agenda – customer experience. More specifically, we focus on the healthcare sector, where the spotlight is on patient experience. Prioritizing patient experience in healthcare not only enhances patient satisfaction and outcomes but also contributes to building trust, loyalty, and a positive reputation in an increasingly competitive and regulated industry.

We spoke to Dr. Reza Ziaee, a renowned expert with a Ph.D. in quality engineering and statistics and over 20 years of experience in healthcare. Dr. Reza shares his experience of reimagining the emergency department at hospitals to manage patient care efficiently and enhance patient satisfaction, resulting in a positive patient experience. Reza led an emergency room redesign that increased patient volume by 50 per day ($20 million annually) and improved patient satisfaction from 30-40% to 70-80% in 6-9 months.

Key Insights from the Interview: 

• How creating a knowledge-based environment can help deliver great patient experience: The healthcare ecosystem is complex, with several touchpoints. At hospitals in particular, there are multiple touch points for patients. They interact with several departments and people in a single visit. This can be challenging to ensure a good patient experience. Hospitals and healthcare institutions must therefore create a knowledge based setting, one that necessitates skills, knowledge, training, and a focused approach to deliver informed services. This knowledge based environment should factor in patient needs, align processes between departments through communication and visibility of data, and ascertain a process of continuous training. There are no straightforward solutions, yet establishing these basic parameters can help deliver superior patient experience.
  
  
• How people must adapt to technology and the technology must meet people half way: Healthcare institutions like hospitals have long strived to align quality with operational enhancements, and the results are not always encouraging. There's always room for improvement, with a focused approach that includes skilled individuals to meet the patient requirements. Technology is an enhancer and can be leveraged in a hospital setting to generate data that can be used for key insights, those that enable the teams to curtail losses and foster an innovative environment.
  
  
• How continuous communication is important for better insights: Reza talked about innovations such as performance boards and emphasized integrating technology to support, rather than dictate processes. The availability of timely and accurate data is essential to transform the information into insights for improvement. He underscores the significance of employee engagement by promoting continuous communication, encouraging questions, and allowing room for errors, all within the framework of ensuring patient safety.

We hope this interview was insightful and you could gather insights on patient experience. Watch this space for more insightful conversations to come!

At SkyCreek, we are all about revolutionizing customer communications. Our multi-channel Enterprise Communication Platform (ECP) is a single innovative platform for email, SMS, and IVR communications that are targeted, personalized, and relevant.

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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash