4 Reasons Your Patient Feedback is Broken and Fix it with Patient Engagement Platform

“Feedback is not as easy to take, but it makes success a piece of cake.’’

 

Consider a scenario – As a nutritionist, you’ve spent hours, understanding your patient’s profile – lifestyle, requirements, and best-suited dietary plan. Both of you are now looking forward to a transformation journey together. However, somewhere along the way, your patient seems to drift apart, and you’re left wondering – what just happened? And how do you, fix it now?

 

It all starts with taking a moment and asking yourself “why?” Why did the patient suddenly change their food/dietary preferences? What was happening at that moment which made them snap out of their path? How can we make sure they continue down this new path, without having to worry about another drastic shift? So how exactly does one go about addressing the root cause? The first step is always understanding the process of what led to the sudden change in diet or physical activity.

 

The key to this conundrum here is patient experience, patient feedback, and patient engagement.Actually, these three blocks in the same order, are what make up for the armour in modern-day’s healthcare providers.

 

A positive patient engagement platform -> positive patient experience -> patient feedback; that’s the chain.

 

Taking ahead the above example, a well-engaging platform will provide you, the nutritionist, with enough information to create a well-defined and absolute experience for the patient. Incorporating patient feedback as a regular engagement tool increases the overall efficiency of your program by many notches. This in turn makes the patient engagement platform more robust and effective. Now, that’s what we call a win-win for everyone!

 

What brings patient feedback on backfoot?

 

We must understand what is causing a gap in the feedback plan – both from the healthcare provider and patient’s perspective. It’s extremely important to understand the reasons in time why patient feedback gets broken midway.  After all, these reasons apply to any healthcare professional, just with some little tweaks and modifications. Continuing the nutritionist’s reference, let us see in the nutritionist’s plan what brings patient feedback on the backfoot? Well, to simplify this, here are the top 4 reasons that might lead you to a broken feedback era:

 

  1. Lack of consistency and regularity in collecting the feedback

Is your program collecting feedback consistently & at regular intervals? Or is it just a formal, end-of-month exercise?

 

  1. Change of ideas or emotions in patients towards the suggested plan

Are you keeping a tab on the interest level and emotional well-being of your patients? Remember, for some patients, changes in diet can cause some kind of emotional setback / emotional reaction.

 

  1. The perceived benefits of the program fail to meet the expectations

Have you set the tone of expectations of benefits that can be looked forward to? Is it practical or is it too aggressive, as per the lifestyle of the patient?

 

  1. Heightened fear among the patients

Patients are many a time skeptical of giving feedback due to fear. They are not sure if it will be used in a constructive way.

Is your clinic ambiance & communication friendly to lessen their fear?

 

Assess the answers later, first read more about it below-

 

How to identify a broken feedback system and how to fix it?

It is important to identify the telltale signs of a break in the feedback system so that a timely fix can be worked out. Here is what you need to primarily check :

 

  1. Is there a regular feedback loop or system you’re working in?
  2. How many patients are regularly using it? Are you getting enough data with respect to the consultations you’re doing?
  3. Is the rating mechanism/suggestions mechanism in the system interactive enough?
  4. Is the feedback being collected, has the ability to be analyzed? Is it based on objective or subjective or abstract data?
  5. How is the feedback being stored and analyzed for all future references?
  6. Are the patients aware that their constructive feedback is actually being used?
  7. Is your language used for feedback is a language of comfort for the patients too?
  8. Are you giving them an option to give you feedback without exposing their identity?

 

Remember, in absence of either of these answers, most likely, your feedback system or patient feedback loop will break sooner or later! So, if you do find your patient feedback system lacking the answers to the above questions, the first and foremost step is to bring in these capabilities.

 

Since all of the above is a time-consuming and tedious job Nth Sense is here to lift the load off of you. Interested in a wholesome patient feedback mechanism? Check out the Nth sense patient engagement platform. This is a plug-and-play base to provide you with a full-fledged patient feedback tool.  It will help you customize and consistently improve your care plans in a foolproof manner.

 

 

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