Patient Experience & Feedback

Dental clinics by definition are a service business. They give healthcare services that could be a consultation or a dental treatment to their patients. Any service business revolves around their customer or in this case patients.

One major goal of a service-based business is to provide exceptional services to its clients.

No service business can survive without this.

Patient Experience

Everyone expects a service quality proportional to what they are charged for it. We expect a different standard of service from an 8000 rs/night hotel compared to an 800 rs/night room. Still, there are some basics that we expect from both of them like security, pleasant staff & clean rooms.

Similarly, there are some basics that a patient expects from a clinic:

1. Clean environment
2. Hygienic practices followed by doctors & assistants.
3. Clean & functioning instruments.
4. Pleasant staff.

We service providers should make sure that these basics are met with utmost care.

Once these basics are met, we can start looking at what other practices we can follow to better our quality of care. As we know quality of service is proportional to what any client is ok to pay for the service.

Appointment Booking

A simplified booking process allows patients to book appointments without friction & improves your lead-to-appointment ratios.

• Patients should be able to easily book an appointment with us, either through a call to reception or online through our website. Once this appointment is booked, the patient should receive an appointment confirmation message with details of the appointment & the directions to the clinic.
• Patients should also be able to reschedule the appointment in case they can’t visit, either online or through a call.
• In case patients try to call the clinic and the reception is not able to take the call, a patient should receive a message with an appointment link. So, they can book appointments even when reception is not able to receive calls. This helps us to minimise patient loss to other clinics.

Clinic Visit

• We should make sure that the doctor is available at the time of appointment & try to minimise delays. Even if there are delays there should be a staff present to give a valid reason for the delay & notify the delay time.
• Consent forms can be sent to the patient digitally even before their clinic visit, which the patients can fill. This will allow patients to meet the doctor as soon as they reach the clinic.
• The clinic should provide a treatment plan with costs once the consultation is done. This can either be provided on paper or digitally. The clinic should also always share an invoice with the patient for the consultation or treatment done.

Post Visit

• Patients should receive a feedback message through which the clinic can collect suggestions on how to better their services. This feedback should not be seen as criticism but as a way to become better.
• If treatment is done, patients should also receive a follow-up call depending on the treatment, if everything is alright with the patient.
•  Patients should also receive reminder messages letting them know when their next visit is due or if there is a treatment that was suggested and hasn’t been completed yet.

Feedbacks

We as people are not ideal & neither are the clinics we run. Each clinic has multiple moving parts - starting from our reception to our assistants, other staff & ourselves. Some parts can falter and provide less-than-ideal experiences to the patients.

There could also be some areas that we have overlooked & can be something that others can give us input on.

Additionally, positive experiences can be posted as reviews on our website or Google business profiles. Reviews are something that each new patient reads before visiting a clinic. As they have not personally experienced your services, they rely on previous patients who have experienced your clinical services.