By: Anish Kapur, MD, Promptly
This guest post is contributed by Promptly, a comprehensive web-based patient experience and automation suite designed for specialty medical and dental practices.
As a healthcare provider, you know that patient care is as much a patient’s thoughts and feelings towards their healthcare as it is their presenting symptoms. Patient trust is a foundational psychological element towards a strong patient-provider relationship and effective care.
When trust is high between patients and providers, clinical outcomes, patient retention, and treatment adherence naturally improve. And while you lead all of your patient interactions with empathy to build that trust, the face-to-face time you have with your patients isn’t the only influence. You can also foster trust through transparent communication and modern digital conveniences that respect the patient’s time.
This post will provide actionable strategies for practices to foster trust at every stage of the patient journey, from the first online interaction to post-visit follow-ups.
1. Improve the Digital Front Door
Long before you welcome a patient into an exam room, your practice has the opportunity to begin building trust. Your digital presence is often the first impression patients have of you. A prospective patient can research doctors, make a decision, and book an appointment all without ever speaking to a receptionist or any representative of your practice, which is why your online presence is so crucial.
To create the best possible patient experience and lay the foundation for a positive patient-provider relationship, follow these tips for designing digital interactions with your practice:
- Eliminate early friction. Streamlined digital booking means that patients save time in the scheduling process and can book an appointment time slot that fits their life. Additionally, instead of worrying about having to fill out a mountain of paperwork upon arrival (and the panic of whether they remembered to bring all of the necessary documents), enabling patients to fill out any pre-appointment forms online relieves that anxiety.
- Establish professionalism through design. Investing in a seamless, organized digital interface inherently builds credibility and also subtly communicates that your practice’s clinical care will be equally organized. In order to minimize confusion, ensure your branding is cohesive across all digital platforms (e.g. your website, social media profiles, online directories, etc.) so patients can easily find and recognize your practice.
- Set clear expectations. Patients have a lot of details to remember before their first appointment, from your office’s location to the required documents. Uncertainty about logistical details can cause anxiety, but by leveraging automated pre-visit messaging, you can alleviate the fear of the unknown and ensure patients feel prepared. Patients can also use automated messages to confirm, reschedule, or cancel appointments seamlessly to eliminate scheduling confusion.
With an intentional approach to your digital front door, your practice is already signaling to patients that you are worthy of their trust and that their experience in-person will also be positive.
2. Communicate with Empathy and Transparency
As a provider, you likely have days where you’re moving from patient to patient without the chance to catch your breath, which can harm the patient experience. But by thoughtfully developing a communication framework that prioritizes empathy and transparency, you’ll have a structure to follow that ensures patients feel heard and understood, even if it’s an incredibly busy day.
The following guidelines support a culture of effective and compassionate patient communication:
- Active listening and validation. Train staff and providers at your practice to acknowledge patient concerns and validate their feelings before rushing to a clinical diagnosis.
- Avoid intimidating medical jargon. Use simple, clear language in verbal conversations and any written web or email copy so patients don’t feel alienated or confused about their own care plans.
- The power of storytelling. While maintaining HIPAA compliance, sharing relatable patient success stories can build emotional connections, showcase ethical care, and boost your practice’s credibility.
When implementing a communication framework for your practice, consider all communications you have with your patients, not just face-to-face interactions. To truly build trust with patients, apply empathetic communication practices to your digital messages and content as well.
3. Deliver Personalized, Comprehensive Care
When treating patients, look beyond the immediate symptoms. A patient’s overall health is deeply tied to their lifestyle, environment, and history, whether that means understanding the unique needs of a veteran or the daily exhaustion of a chronic disease. When your practice actively accounts for these broader life circumstances, you show your commitment to their wellbeing, which instantly builds deep-rooted trust.
To make personalized healthcare a reality for your busy practice, lean on data insights to help get a patient’s full story. Digital intake forms can gather holistic insights and preferences prior to appointments so you can tailor the conversation accordingly. Additionally, empower the entire care team. Nurses and other support staff are the backbone of the patient experience and including them as you build frameworks for compassionate, individualized care will ensure patients feel seen.
4. Close the Feedback Loop
The final step in building and securing long-term trust is patient feedback. After patients leave their appointments, genuinely and consistently asking for them to share about their experience is one of the most impactful ways to prove that they can depend on your practice for holistic care.
The steps to successfully incorporating a patient feedback process are:
- Automate the ask. Implement automated post-visit surveys to seamlessly capture patient sentiment while the experience is still fresh on their minds. This will help you get the most accurate psychological impressions from patients, giving you a clear picture of how much patients trust your practice. Promptly’s guide to patient satisfaction surveys shares that the average industry response rate is 5-10%, but by optimizing and automating the process, your practice can earn a 18-20% rate.
- Respond to feedback constructively. Hold your practice accountable to patient standards and respond to individual complaints, as well as celebrating the positive experiences that patients share.
- Focus on continuous improvement. The individual responses you receive are useful for evaluating your practice’s effectiveness in building patient trust, and you can also leverage your aggregate survey data. This data can help you identify friction points in the patient journey and help your team envision operational changes that will show patients their voices matter.
Asking for and acting on feedback signals to your patients that your practice is accountable and worthy of their loyalty. Giving patients a voice gives them a psychological sense of empowerment, which will contribute to your practice winning their trust for years to come.
Taking the time to implement practice-wide procedures that create a positive patient experience from start to finish is one of the best investments you can make. Being proactive, compassionate, and tailoring patient care to the individual will set your practice apart and is a step towards satisfactory clinical outcomes.
