What Is the “Perfect” Patient Experience?
Membership-based medicine is designed in favor of true patient care and the patient experience, the original definition of healthcare.
We have the time and capacity to develop relationships with our patients and focus on crucial elements of care that traditional models can’t provide — prevention, lifestyle, mental health, and more.
In addition to excellent patient care, patient experience is key. It’s how a patient feels about the care they receive, and it’s one of the major differentiators between membership-based and traditional practices.
People need to feel valued as individuals. They need to feel cared for and understood. Conversations about health are incredibly personal, meaning patients need to trust their physician, care coordinator, and everyone else within a practice.
This is a far cry from the cold waiting room experience most people are accustomed to. We’ve all visited medical offices where our welcome consisted of filling out 30 pages of questionnaires with a dirty, almost dry pen. Once you’ve completed your homework, “entertainment” meant crumpled, five-month-old magazines and a muted TV playing reruns of “Family Feud.”
Membership-based medicine sets itself apart by making people feel welcome, authentically comfortable, and valued throughout the patient experience. Patients genuinely feel respected. They feel heard and understood.
Let’s talk about what that looks like, and why there’s no single “perfect” patient experience in membership medicine.
No Such Thing as One “Perfect” Experience
Just as every patient is unique and complex, with needs that fluctuate and vary from day to day, so too are patient care and the practices that provide it. No two are the same.
But society has taught us to believe that success comes from repetition. You deliver the same service or product across the board to as many people as possible. It’s the same Happy Meal whether you’re at a McDonald’s in Seattle or Boston.
But that kind of repetition is a product of “scaling” successfully at a macro level.
Concierge medicine bucks that trend. We focus on the individual. Yes, we still need specific standardized processes in place, but we also have the license and capacity to cater the experience to each patient’s needs.
The very term “concierge” implies such versatility. The original bearer of the title — the hotel concierge — takes the baseline experience of renting a room and turns it into something personalized. They have the artistic license to adapt each guest’s experience to their individual wants and needs. While no two stays look precisely the same, every guest leaves feeling cared for and happy.
Some hotels have a full-fledged concierge service, and while all should, some, unfortunately, do not. There are hotel managers whose goal is to turn over rooms and serve as many people as possible, while others choose to focus more heavily on each individual guest’s experience.
The same is true with medical care. On the spectrum from pure population health to individualized concierge care, it’s a matter of what people are seeking. If they want a more personalized patient experience, we’re here to provide it at a world-class level.
Rather than perfecting a one-size-fits-all product for the masses, we focus on perfecting each patient experience.
Facets of a World-Class Patient Experience
An outstanding patient experience is more than just the way we converse with our patients. In fact, it includes every facet of the patient journey, from onboarding to follow-up and everything in between.
And the key to all the facets is preparation.
Below are some of the significant components of a patient’s experience with any practice, along with some ideas to spark your creativity and take your preparation to the next level.
Member Onboarding
Member onboarding typically consists of three stages:
- Introduction to the practice
- Welcome to the practice
- How may we help you?
Start by introducing your practice to someone interested in joining. After they join, welcome them and offer your services. Then, gather all the information necessary to identify the patient’s needs.
The onboarding stage is the first impression that sets patient expectations and defines the tone of your ongoing relationship. It’s what sets you up for success — especially with patients investing their time and money to seek out something more than routine care.
The big question here is HOW you onboard. How can you prepare an onboarding process that makes people feel welcomed, valued, and cared for?
Think back to that 30-page patient questionnaire we mentioned. Even membership-based practices must collect information about our patients. But how we collect that data makes an impression and sets us apart.
When patients walk into your practice, will your front desk hand them a stack of paperwork to fill out in the waiting room? Does that communicate your respect for your patients’ time, or does it make them feel like they’ve been given a homework assignment?
Here’s where creativity comes in. How else can you get the information you need while simultaneously providing a world-class experience?
Could you escort them to an ambient meeting space, offer them a selection of teas, and introduce them to their patient care coordinator? Maybe your care coordinator or physician can sit down, ask questions, and fill in the information for the patient, making the interaction feel more like a conversation than a pop quiz. One practice may have a robust staff, with a patient care coordinator, receptionist, and a patient experience manager on the same team. The physician might open the door, make the tea, and lead the conversation in a smaller practice.
While there is no single correct answer, there are many ways to handle this correctly, expressing your respect for your patients’ time and conveying your genuine care and concern for their experience.
Pre-Appointment
The pre-appointment includes confirming an appointment with a patient, but it also provides an opportunity for your staff to check in with the patient. You can let them know you’re looking forward to seeing them and ask a few questions. How are things going? How are they feeling? Has anything new come up?
On the patient’s side, this sets the tone for their upcoming visit. On the practice side, the crucial step is communicating the substance of the call with the rest of the team, including the physician, so everyone is on the same page and set up for success.
Appointment
Clearly, the appointment is where the actual care takes place. But more intrinsically, the appointment is where you have the opportunity to prove to the patient that they were heard during the pre-appointment process.
If, in the pre-appointment call, your patient care coordinator learned that the patient has an upcoming vacation, you can mention it. You might let them know you appreciate the timeliness of their appointment and wish them a good time. They’ll feel heard and seen, and trust is soon to follow.
Post-Appointment
The post-appointment involves someone from your team — the physician, patient care coordinator, etc. — calling a patient to follow up on the things discussed in their appointment.
The post-appointment varies widely depending on the purpose of the patient’s visit. Maybe the physician wants to check on how they’re doing with their prescription, or how an ailment is resolving. Or maybe someone from the team calls to ask how that vacation went.
Whatever you decide to call about, this personalized communication and follow-through lets patients know they’re appreciated and that you’re thinking of them even when they’re not in the office.
Patient Calls and Requests
Unexpected and last-minute patient requests are an unavoidable part of any medical practice — and they’re also part of the patient experience.
Here again, preparation is the key to excellence.
The most important consideration for this aspect of the patient experience is developing a transparent process for your practice to receive and handle these communications effectively. Do patients call (or text) the physician directly? Or do they have the patient care coordinator’s phone number, or is it at your reception desk?
After deciding who the patient has access to, you can determine the process for organizing and following up on requests.
Golden Opportunities to Perfect the Patient Experience
The patient experience is more extensive than merely onboarding. It’s more than what happens during an appointment. And it’s far more than following up with patients once a year to ask about renewing.
We’re only scratching the surface of all these points; they’re by no means the only opportunities for practices to consider the patient experience. Every facet of the patient journey is a golden opportunity to set yourself apart from traditional healthcare. By diving deep and investing time and forethought into preparation, you’ll find the touches that make your practice stand out.
How the Patient Experience Varies from Practice to Practice
As we’ve mentioned, the patient experience will look different from practice to practice. Everyone’s resources, team, patient base, personality, and style vary, and no formula can encapsulate the perfect patient experience across all those variables.
Providing a significant patient experience starts with embracing two things:
- Whether you’re a sole practitioner or part of a large team, the patient experience is everyone in the practice’s responsibility.
- That said, you’ll need one individual who can own the patient experience process, whatever that means in your practice, to ensure continuity and that all the crucial steps are taking place. That person could be anyone — a patient experience manager, care coordinator, receptionist, or physician — as long as the role is filled.
Conclusion: Perfect Your Own Patient Experience
Though the patient experience will vary by practice, the result should always be the same — a patient who feels cared for, valued, understood, and respected.
Above all, the patient is always the patient. Their needs fluctuate from one day to the following, relative to their mood and health and the circumstances of their lives. They don’t expect us to know everything about them or how they feel before an appointment. However, the manner in which we treat them in every other interaction will create an environment of clear communication and mutual respect.
When we set the foundation from the onboarding process all the way through the post-appointment follow-up, we prove the patient is far more than a transaction to us. In turn, they feel comfortable sharing their lives and concerns with us and, over time, entrust us with their health.
Patients need physicians, but physicians also need patients. Hearing “thank you” from a physician is a sentence we can almost guarantee patients haven’t heard anywhere else. It’s a great way to bring the whole experience full circle.
Frank Hernandez serves as the Chief Executive Officer at ROAMD, where membership-based, concierge, DPC and private medicine, all come together to transform the traditional healthcare industry as we know it. Frank’s experience in world-class luxury hospitality and network-based organizations gives him a unique perspective that he is passionate about in sharing with the world. Prior to ROAMD, Frank worked as Chef Concierge at renowned Halekulani in the heart of Honolulu for over 20 years. He studied humanities at California State University Monterey Bay, and Hospitality Management at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is a former board member, and current professional affiliate of Les Clefs d’Or USA, the country’s number one organization for the most elite hotel concierges.
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