How to Improve the Patient Experience: 3 Tips for Chiropractors

It’s a question that many healthcare providers are asking more frequently these days: what are the best ideas for improving the patient experience?

How patients perceive their ability to access care has always been important, but it now plays a more significant factor in your ability to attract and retain patients. If you can’t find ways to improve the patient experience, you risk losing your patients to your competitors. Providers that offer easier ways to make appointments and provide enhanced communication and streamlined billing systems and other processes are the ones that come out on top.

New technology plays a crucial role. Next-generation practice management systems with embedded electronic health records can provide new direction for how to improve the patient experience.

Here are three tips for chiropractors on improving the patient experience.

1. Implement Online Scheduling

Before the days of the internet, patients did what they had to do to schedule appointments with healthcare providers such as chiropractors. This was the typical process: look for the phone number, dial, compare schedules with a member of the staff, and hopefully, find a convenient time. This is also something that takes up a great deal of time in your office. For every patient call, there is a staff member who has to spend time finding an appointment time and place that works for both parties.

Connected technology provides a better way. Allowing patients to go online to choose when and where they would like to be seen is a crucial feature of the modern patient experience. You set your practice hours and provider schedules, and the practice management software will do the rest. Patients see only the times that are available and schedule from there.

Online scheduling also improves your ability to market your practice. Patients who may not have the time to call or only realize after hours that they need an appointment can get on your schedule on their own terms.

The online schedule system has other benefits that can contribute to improving the patient experience. For instance, the scheduling of an appointment can trigger an automated appointment reminder, something that has proven effective in preventing no-shows.

Online scheduling also improves the patient experience by freeing up your staff to tackle other tasks more geared toward care.

2. Use Technology to Engage

The rhythms of your practice can sometimes limit when you can apply your full scale of knowledge. You have a short window of time to spend with each patient and so much to do. There isn’t always enough time to counsel patients on preventive care that can make a long-term difference in their health. These types of communications can go a long way toward building trust with patients, and trust can lead to improved outcomes.

Practice management software can help reshape that reality. The system from ChiroSpring enables you to link patient records to certain types of electronic communications. For instance, you can direct the system to send content such as exercise guides or diet plans to patients for their long-term care.

Another area of technology for improved engagement is practice management software to provide reminders to patients during their office visits.

The CHIROSPRING application, for example, enables chiropractors to set “stop managers” in patient records, which are reminders to you and the staff to stop for a moment to pass along important information that will help the patient feel better.

Using all the communication tools available in practice management and EHR systems can help improve the patient experience.

3. Digitize Your Record-Keeping Practices

Another idea for improving the patient experience is to make full use of the ability of practice management systems to digitize and automate processes in a way that drives better patient care.

For instance, the ChiroSpring application enables you to create a standardized patient complaint form that works best for your practice. By carefully documenting patient challenges in a consistent template, you can establish baseline conditions while also evaluating progress from appointment to appointment.

The application has graphical tools for evaluating severity, as well as imaging capabilities that include annotation with tools that enable exports to other programs. Accurate X-rays or other types of radiography are also showing increasing evidence of improved patient outcomes.

In the area of process improvement, you can convert to using online intake forms as a way of saving time for both patients and your staff. Patients can complete the online intake before they arrive and be ready for their appointment. Similarly, staff members no longer have to waste time retyping details or scanning paper forms for the patient’s record.

Outcome assessments and standardized SOAP notes are records that can ultimately lead to a better patient experience due to their efficiency.

Let ChiroSpring Deliver Improvements in Patient Experience

ChiroSpring is dedicated to developing the tools that chiropractors need to become more efficient and profitable while delivering the highest quality care in a way that appeals to patients.

The ChiroSpring application is an all-in-one practice management and EHR system built specifically for chiropractors for improved delivery of chiropractic care. The application streamlines aspects of your practice to provide better all-around care that patients can access with less friction and greater ease of use.

ChiroSpring helps chiropractors and staff regain face-time with patients, thus spending less time on back-office tasks.