Improving the Patient Experience

Healthcare is increasingly recognizing that providing a positive patient experience can reap significant benefits. Intuitive Health knows that focusing on patient experience results in good word-of-mouth, excellent care, and greater satisfaction, leading to healthier financial outcomes in an industry that sees costs rising significantly. In short, improving the patient experience Is a must for aligning with the growing trend of patients self-referring and making more informed decisions on where and whom to get care with.

How Intuitive Health Is Always Focusing on Improving Patient Experience

Intuitive Health is passionately committed to redefining the healthcare experience around the patient's needs and comfort. Its innovative dual-model medical facility seamlessly merges an emergency room with urgent care, offering a streamlined, customer-centric decision-making process during critical healthcare moments. By eliminating the stress of choosing between an ER or Urgent Care, Intuitive Health empowers patients to focus on what truly matters: their well-being. It holds a core belief that a single disruption in the patient journey can compromise the entire experience; therefore, they have meticulously designed each touchpoint to be intuitive and responsive to patient needs, from the moment they walk in through to their aftercare.

This unique combination streamlines door-to-door times and reduces waiting times while offering convenient retail location options and an intentional level of customer service. Integrating both services also allows for more efficient scheduling of key staff, leading to greater patient satisfaction with their experience and increased accuracy in diagnosis and treatment plans.

The focus on outstanding customer service, the patient experience, and high-quality care has been at the forefront of Intuitive Health's success. They believe a positive consumer health experience is essential to build trust in their brand — something that continues to win over loyal patients of all ages and backgrounds.

Through this model, they are changing how people view healthcare offerings nationwide by focusing and constantly improving upon their customer experience. Additionally, Intuitive Health's facilities are designed to provide patients with a fast and simple patient journey by implementing a process defined in its organizational culture from pre-to-post-visit interactions.

Recognize that Patients are Consumers

Patients want transparency. And they want several healthcare options as they have within the retail setting. However, they also want to be involved in the decisions that affect them, especially their well-being and their family's health.

Digital Footprint: Pre-Visit Interactions

Patients are now consumers in the market with similar expectations to have the ability to find, review, and validate free-market decisions as they would in retail settings. The most crucial step in ensuring a potential patient chooses a specific health center to visit is the ease and accessibility of finding and navigating the facility's website and information. Intuitive Health's partner locations go through detailed steps to ensure that the entire process before a patient arrives in person is as simple as possible.

When an individual enters an internet search looking for the best urgent care or emergency room nearby, they are greeted with the health center's information – location, hours, phone number, and website. From there, the patient can visit the center as a walk-in or book an appointment online or by phone quickly. Therefore, the website must be designed for an easy user experience (UX) with clear instructions and a process for booking an appointment.

Administrative & Faculty Interactions

Once a patient arrives at an Intuitive Health facility, their unique approach to healthcare and combined emergency room (ER) and urgent care model comes into play. Each facility relies on its staff members and organizational outline to ensure that each patient has an exceptional experience. It takes the extra step to outline their approach using qualitative and quantitative data pulled from the NPS surveys.

In fact, every team member is trained on Intuitive Health's proprietary training methodology, Pursuing WOW, which has been carefully crafted over the years, honed, and refined to deliver outstanding healthcare. experiences.

Reception Area

Staff at the reception area at a healthcare facility are the first face and in-person interactions for many patients, playing an impactful role. These first impressions lay the way for positive experiences and introduce loyalty. It is important for Intuitive Health and their partner facilities to ensure that each reception staff personnel is trained and equipped with the same information and skills to ensure uniformity. We display compassion with every patient by greeting every patient, "We're glad you're here. How can we serve you?"

Patient Wait Times

Wait times encompass a variety of lengths of time between interactions with different staff members. For example, a traditional urgent care visit can take over an hour with minimal face-to-face time with nurses and physicians, while a typical trip to the ER lasts even longer. As a result, if a patient must self-diagnose the level of care they need for their health needs, they may end up spending hours inside an ER when a shorter visit to urgent care would have sufficed. Intuitive Health's dual ER and urgent care model looks to significantly reduce these times by simplifying the process and determining the necessary level of care by an ER-trained physician as quickly as possible. In addition, Intuitive Health's medical staff accelerates the process by ordering any necessary tests after hearing the patient's symptoms.

The average wait time in the U.S. for emergency treatment is 55.8 minutes. However, at Intuitive Health, there are little to no wait times.

The average door-to-door time (complete visit time from entering to exiting the facility) for an Intuitive Health urgent care visit is less than 60 minutes.

The average door-to-door (complete visit time from entering to exiting the facility) time for an Intuitive Health ER visit is less than 120 minutes.

Healthcare Staffing

People play a significant role in the overall patient experience as the faces associated with the visit. From the reception staff to the physicians, each patient interaction can add to or hurt the totality of an individual's patient experience. At Intuitive Health, we have outlined and created specific training using proven protocols for our staff that defines our values and goals as the premier choice for emergent and non-emergent care services.

Employee training and engagement must be in place to improve patient satisfaction scores and outcomes and prevent turnover. When patients see that the entire care team working together, we know they feel comfortable and confident in their care.

Servant Leadership Culture

Servant leadership is a style of leading by example, where a leader focuses on providing support and development to their team members. It emphasizes guiding with empathy, inspiring through trustworthiness, and achieving goals while putting others first. It is where teammates do more for others than is expected in return. Instead of seeing themselves as superior or high-ranking authority figures above those they lead - servant leaders act in service to their followers for mutual success.

At Intuitive Health, a servant-leader mindset can create an environment where trust and satisfaction grow. However, we know it takes more than just good intentions to cultivate better outcomes for our patients - it requires dedication, commitment, and hard work on the part of every team member. As a servant leader within every role at Intuitive Health, our team members have the potential to impact each stage of the patient care journey.

The Healthcare Facility

While people play a big part in the patient experience, so does the health center. Patients look for facilities that are clean, accessible, and safe – from the parking lot to the waiting rooms to restrooms.

Cleaning: Healthcare facilities are held to a high level of cleanliness to ensure that each area is properly disinfected and safe for each patient. The waiting area, patient rooms, and bathrooms are continuously cleaned and disinfected at specific intervals and between patients.

Environment: The environment of each ER and urgent care center enhances the patient experience. These environmental aspects include the physical environment like decor, temperature, and maintaining the facility's physical appearance.

Parking: While many hospitals and urgent care facilities may not consider exterior aspects like parking as an important part of the patient experience, we recognize its impact on the patient experience. Parking and accessibility are primary considerations in building and operating these facilities.

Post-Visit Interactions

Continuing care outside the facility to ensure the patient's symptoms do not return is vital in creating a positive patient experience. Physicians will prescribe patients treatments and options to adequately address the problem and advise on other avenues to seek care. In addition, the reception staff at the facility will send post-visit reminders and check in on patients.

Billing is one of the last interactions patients experience with a healthcare provider.

Intuitive Health is founded on providing patients with value-based care and transparency, especially billing.

Intuitive Health's commitment to transparent billing has earned the trust of our customers and enabled patients to feel confident in where they seek medical care. We believe in h. Our patient retention rates are over 70 percent in some locations, with the average Intuitive Health facility seeing more than 100 patients daily.

Why does Patient Experience Matter?

Patient experience matters because it affects patient outcomes, first and foremost. Patient satisfaction significantly impacts health outcomes - good communication with patients correlates with better compliance, clinical results, safety protocols, and more judicious use of healthcare services.

Patient experience also impacts how people view the healthcare industry as a whole. For example, satisfied patients spread positive word-of-mouth reviews about providers, leading potential clients to select them over other practitioners with lower overall ratings. Conversely, dissatisfaction can lead current customers and potential new ones away from services they deem lacking in quality or care - ultimately leading providers to lose business if they don't do something quickly to address these issues.

Additionally, patient experience is important because it improves employee morale by empowering staff members working within the provider's practice or organization. Staffers benefit from higher job satisfaction when serving happy patients since not only does the overall atmosphere improve, but feedback is enhanced due to providing quality services that help individuals return home feeling confident about their medical diagnoses and treatments received; thus improving employees' understanding of what kind of service works best for various types of clients as well as which approaches should be avoided.

How To Improve the Patient Experience In Healthcare

Healthcare organizations must utilize NPS to gauge the patient experience and promote an ongoing culture of feedback and improvement. This methodology encourages a change in attitude that looks at the patient experience as something limited within one department but calls for full-scale organizational transformation through cultural influence. NPS enables providers to make changes and improve all aspects of healthcare and gives administration to facilities management the opportunity and resources for delivering superior patient care.

Organizations must create a culture of positive human interaction to provide amazing customer experiences. By equipping front-line employees with the proper tools and training, they can reach out to a disgruntled or unengaged patient to resolve issues before it's too late. With loyal customers come referrals, leading more people back for services - resulting in an increased revenue stream that cannot be discounted. Investing now could lead to long-term success if done correctly.

Patients have become the primary decision-makers in healthcare, shifting away from traditional scenarios where they are seen as "cost centers." Healthcare organizations must treat patients like customers and be proactive regarding their experience. Thinking outside of the box - with strategies similar to successful retailers' use – is key for success now and in the future.

From the convenience of its locations to customer service, Intuitive Health has revolutionized urgent care and emergency services from coast to coast. With such a commitment to the patient experience and streamlined customer service standard operating procedures, it’s no wonder that their medical facilities have achieved great success. Customer testimonials commenting on the “peace of mind” that this new all-in-one medical facility provides really drives home Intuitive Health’s mission: to make care simple and accessible for all. Taking a unique approach to health offers not just better care for patients but also brings comfort to them in knowing that Intuitive Health is always available when they need it most. As we move into the future of healthcare, one thing is certain: Intuitive Health will be leading the way.

More information about Intuitive Health's dedication to the patient experience is available at www.iheruc.com/about.

About Intuitive Health

Hybrid ER and Urgent Care Pioneers. Founded in 2008, Intuitive Health's flagship brand Legacy ER & Urgent Care, was one of the nation's first healthcare facilities to offer urgent care and emergency room treatment options under one roof. Intuitive Health has built an exceptional customer service program with industry-leading ratings by providing transparent billing, a welcoming clinical environment, and one-on-one service with board-certified, emergency-trained physicians. Patients demand better service and honest billing because it makes sense; it is intuitive. By utilizing retail care and elevating patients' healthcare experiences, Intuitive Health has seen consistent growth since 2008, regardless of the 500% increase in competition from free-standing healthcare facilities. Today, Intuitive Health oversees 450,000 annual patients from coast to coast. The brand will have 50 operational facilities serving over 1,000,000 patients annually by 2024!