Patient experience and satisfaction are recently becoming more centered by the healthcare industry. They have become so important that all healthcare professionals are now encouraged to follow certain patient engagement practices, especially when treating seniors.
Since medical expenses and insurance premiums are on the rise, it’s vital that a senior patient must be given a positive patient experience so that they’ll be encouraged to be more proactive in maintaining their overall health and wellbeing by visiting their healthcare providers more often.
To provide a positive patient experience to seniors, you must learn how to engage them properly. Here are some of the best senior patient engagement practices you can employ:
1. Invest in Online Patient Engagement Platforms
An online patient engagement platform, like Relatient, is an ideal product to help with engaging with senior patients. Relatient is a patient engagement software which promotes more patient engagement. It’s an ideal tool for healthcare professionals to use if they want to reduce no-shows, provide better two-way communication, and improve patient experience.
This kind of tool is particularly helpful as it allows you as a healthcare provider to directly interact with your patients while also minimizing the risk of spreading infections that come with unnecessary in-person interactions.
Relatient also helps facilitate better real-time assessment of senior patients. This will then allow healthcare professionals to quickly respond to any medical emergencies and reduce the risk of complications and further medical expenses. The increased connectivity between senior patients and healthcare professionals offered by online patient engagement platforms will help promote proper care and positive patient experience.
2. Personalize Communications to Build More Trust with Senior Patients
One of the best ways to improve senior patient engagement is to personalize communications. Personalizing communications helps to build trust with patients, especially seniors.
Senior patients will trust your messages to them more when you make them more personalized. There are now health resources that will allow you to create personalized messages for your senior patients. You can personalize your messages based on a number of things such as the patient’s communication preferences or prescriptions.
Personalizing communications will also make it easier for the senior patient to understand their current situation. It’ll also help them understand their medical bills better. Most senior patients want to get an easy-to-understand explanation of anything they may have questions about, whether it’s their medical expenses or their medical conditions, so they are more likely to trust you if you can make them understand easily their current medical condition and their charges. Being transparent with them means they will feel more comfortable visiting your practice.
3. Keep All Information Simple
Most seniors will probably not understand the medical terms and jargon that you would use with your colleagues.
It might be acceptable when you’re talking to other healthcare professionals, but if you are talking to your patients, especially seniors, it’s best to simplify the information you give to them when discussing their health.
Keep all information simple and easy to comprehend so that your patients will have a full understanding of what you’re discussing with them. The same goes for any written materials or videos that you give to them. This way, both sides will be on the same page, especially when setting a home healthcare plan for a senior patient.
4. Be Proactive With All Your Patients
Just because one patient is considered to be more high-risk than your other patients, it doesn’t mean that you only have to prioritize that high-risk patient. You have to be proactive with all your patients. Healthcare providers should never prioritize a single or a group of patients over another unless there is an active emergency situation. Even low-risk patients need daily check-ins, too—after all, low-risk doesn’t mean no risk, and you never know when an emergency will strike.
This is where an online patient engagement platform becomes very helpful. If all your patients are accounted for in the platform, you’ll be able to give them equal time and attention, not just those ones that are considered high-risk.
Conclusion
Having a great healthcare plan is no longer enough when treating senior patients. No matter how great the healthcare plan you’ve created for your patient is, it’ll be useless if your customers will not adopt it. Proper engagement is what will ensure that your plan is going to be adopted by your patients.
The need for proper patient engagement is strong, especially if the majority of your patients are seniors. With proper senior patient engagement, you’ll see fewer cases of hospital readmissions and complications. Most importantly, having patients that are engaged means they are healthier, happier, and satisfied with your care.
Author: Marci Sykes
Marci Sykes is a professional blogger who is known for her content about family, and health. Marci’s blog is regularly updated with articles, videos and infographics about family and health, which is why she has successfully gained many loyal readers through the years.