Improve Patient Experience​ Archives – Ensemble Health Partners https://www.ensemblehp.com/blog/category/improve-patient-experience/ Your modern revenue cycle solution Thu, 09 Oct 2025 16:00:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.ensemblehp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Logo-Chevron-80x80.png Improve Patient Experience​ Archives – Ensemble Health Partners https://www.ensemblehp.com/blog/category/improve-patient-experience/ 32 32 How to Achieve Superior Customer Service Through Excellence in Registration https://www.ensemblehp.com/blog/how-to-achieve-superior-customer-service-through-excellence-in-registration/ Fri, 09 May 2025 12:09:06 +0000 https://www.ensemblehp.com/?p=18262 By focusing on specific key questions from patient satisfaction surveys, we can turn patient registration into a source of comfort and trust. … Read More

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The registration process is far more than a routine step — it’s the first moment a patient connects with a facility, setting the tone for their entire visit. A smooth and welcoming registration process can calm a patient’s nerves and build trust, while a disorganized or indifferent one can increase their anxiety and result in patient distrust.

Patient access teams, as the frontline providers of this experience, hold the power to shape these moments. By focusing on key registration-specific questions from patient satisfaction surveys — three from outpatient and three from ambulatory surgery — we can turn this critical touchpoint into a source of comfort and trust.

The value of customer service in patient registration

Walking into a healthcare facility can be daunting, especially with worries about a procedure or diagnosis. A friendly greeting at the registration desk can lift one’s spirits, while long delays or a cold reception can deepen unease.

Patient access teams aim to create a calming and confident registration experience. By setting patient satisfaction goals, they promise a better experience focused on care. Aiming to enhance the ease of the registration process can unite staff around this purpose.

Using the SMART framework (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound), these goals become actionable steps, motivating teams to alleviate patient stress and enhance compassionate care.

While it’s important to know patient access teams can’t control every part of a patient’s experience — like medical outcomes — they can shape the registration process. Questions about ease, helpfulness and wait times are within their grasp, offering a chance to make a real emotional difference.

By zeroing in on these areas, teams can take practical steps that lift patients’ moods and reduce their stress. This focus also empowers staff, letting them see the direct impact of their work, which boosts morale and reinforces their role as supportive anchors in the patient journey.

To improve registration, we must first understand how patients feel. Whether they’re arriving for a routine outpatient visit or preparing for ambulatory surgery, they bring a mix of emotions — nervousness, uncertainty or even fear. Registration is their first chance to feel supported.

Below, we dive into six key Press Ganey survey questions, exploring their meaning and offering tips to enhance the experience.

A closer look at outpatient survey questions

1. Helpfulness of Registration

  • Meaning: Patients are looking for a lifeline. When staff are supportive — offering clear answers and a helping hand — it turns worry into relief, showing patients they’re not alone.
  • Tip: Train staff regularly to spot and solve common patient concerns, building a team that’s ready to care. Have service recovery items at hand and empower teams to use their best judgment to resolve the issue. Debrief later, as a team, to see if their actions should now be best practice or explore a better solution.

2. Ease of the Registration Process

  • Meaning: A complicated process fuels frustration. A straightforward, well-explained system calms patients down, making them feel valued instead of burdened.
  • Tip: Use simple forms and offer pre-registration online to cut down on stress when they arrive. Praise patients who use eCheck-in and educate and encourage those who don’t.

3. Wait Time and Registration

  • Meaning: Waiting can feel endless when you’re anxious. Quick service shows respect for a patient’s time, while delays can make them feel ignored.
  • Tip: Fine-tune scheduling to keep things moving and keep patients in the loop if there’s a holdup. Keep patients informed of wait times and use language like “Our registration process is complete, so I will have you wait here for your tech to pick you up. If they are not here within 15 minutes of your scheduled appointment, please stop back to my desk so we can get a time estimate for you.”

Key ambulatory surgery survey questions

1. Check-In Ran Smoothly

  • Meaning: Surgery patients are often on edge, and a bumpy check-in only adds to their tension. A smooth process reassures them that everything’s under control.
  • Tip: Gather info ahead of time and use checklists to keep things seamless and stress-free. Note who is with them so you can provide updates if a delay in scheduling occurs. Inform them of where they can wait or take a quick walk.

2. Clerks/Receptionists Were Helpful

  • Meaning: Helpful staff are a comfort. They answer questions and guide patients through scary moments, making them feel supported.
  • Tip: Train staff on surgery-specific needs and encourage them to offer extra help, like a quick rundown of what’s ahead.

3. Clerks/Receptionists Were Courteous

  • Meaning: Kindness matters. A polite, friendly interaction can ease a patient’s nerves, reminding them they’re more than just a case.
  • Tip: Teach staff to listen actively, use patients’ names and keep their tone warm and welcoming.

The bottom line

Let’s reshape the patient experience from the first hello. The payoff is huge: A great registration moment lowers stress, builds trust, and starts the healthcare journey on a hopeful note. In the end, patient access teams do more than process paperwork — they open the door to a caring, compassionate experience.

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]]> Our Approach to Patient Experience https://www.ensemblehp.com/blog/our-approach-to-patient-experience/ Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:45:48 +0000 https://www.ensemblehp.com/?p=18064 Effective revenue cycle management and effective patient conversations can enhance the patient experience rather than detracting from it. … Read More

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Healthcare is deeply personal for patients. It’s the most important financial transactions we have as American consumers. If fine dining, high-end hotels and VIP concerts can exchange goods and services for money without discomfort, surely, healthcare can too.

But healthcare must learn a thing or two from the industries that have mastered customer service. That’s why ensuring a quality patient experience is so critical, even and especially in the healthcare revenue cycle. Providers don’t have to avoid talking about money. In fact, effective revenue cycle management and effective patient conversations can enhance the patient experience rather than detracting from it, as many organizations fear.

Imagine going to a restaurant. The patient experience is akin to the entire dining experience, from making a reservation to enjoying the meal and paying the bill. The healthcare revenue cycle is like the restaurant’s operations, ensuring that the reservation is confirmed, the meal is prepared and served correctly and the payment process is smooth and transparent.

Now, imagine if your dining bill arrived at the table with completely different pricing than you’d seen on the menu, or that the restaurant’s own coupon was declined at the register with no explanation. Imagine your meal could only be paid for by check, or required you to stamp and post a physical stub with your payment for the night’s dining.

Just as a positive dining experience encourages repeat visits, a positive patient experience in healthcare encourages patient loyalty and timely payments — and a negative experience can build distrust and resentment, even among formerly satisfied patients.

Nothing will kill patient experience faster than getting a bill two weeks after you’ve been seen and not knowing it’s coming.

Susan Milligan, Director of Patient Experience, Ensemble

So, how can revenue cycle operators work to ensure a positive patient experience during every interaction? Different organizations approach this in different ways. Here’s Ensemble’s approach.

The Ensemble Difference

Ensemble educates every single associate on patient experience and why it matters, offering webinars and multimodal trainings on how to have positive interactions and the difference these conversations can make. Even Ensemble employees who are not patient-facing understand the necessity of ensuring a positive patient experience. Patient experience is core to our annual training, regardless of where an associate sits in the revenue cycle.

At Ensemble, we believe that great patient experience is a function of improving three components: empathy, empowerment and engagement. Addressing these ensures that patient-facing associates can communicate effectively, have the tools and processes they need to handle patients deftly and feel valued in their own roles. Increased employee engagement is tied to an improved patient experience.

Empathy

Whether inherent or learned, empathy helps associates sense and anticipate a patient’s spoken or unspoken needs. It’s about connecting at a human level and having conversations that matter. Our teams focus on empathy through effective, caring and compassionate communication at every stage of the patient experience.

Making empathetic conversations part of the daily routine, supporting financial advocacy for patients and clearly outlining benefits prevents unwelcome surprises during times with so many unknowns and will create a positive experience for patients.

Empowerment

Empowering your patient-facing teams makes a difference by improving processes, work environments and experiences. Make sure teams are all aligned on purpose as an organization; every associate should know what patient experience means and that it’s central to your organization’s mission and values. This also means documenting your approach and gaining approval from all necessary participants, so this process can be replicated again and again.

Engagement

If associates feel engaged, they are more likely to deliver a positive experience to others, including patients. Employee engagement can be fostered using open communication, encouraging stretch goals, plus personal and professional development. Management of expectations is key.

This might look like conducting engagement surveys, establishing an Employee Advisory Group (EAG), or consistently recognizing employees for their contributions. Learn more about how to engage employees and ultimately improve patient experience >>>

Empathy + empowerment + engagement = improved experience

Here at Ensemble, we infuse this approach — of leading with empathy, empowerment and engagement — into everything we do.

Every associate is trained annually on the importance and value of patient experience, and we analyze the impact of patient satisfaction on every new solution we deploy. Our engineers take the entire process into consideration, asking themselves at each stage about the hypothetical impacts of technological innovation: If we move this specific lever, for example, what’s that going to do for patients or how will it otherwise impact patients?

It’s a constant consideration — the way we define success for revenue cycle performance always includes patient satisfaction performance, since the two are so closely tied. And, in order to apply our solutions, we need to first analyze and understand how patients are engaging today and then create the appropriate interventions.

Here are specific strategies we have deployed with clients to improve both their revenue and the patient experience:

Improving the registration experience for patients

There’s a difference between implementation and adoption, and at Ensemble we’re not just in the business of implementing tools — we’re thinking about the patient experience at every step.

This is where empathy comes into play, as our associates are taught to always question: “If I was the patient, what would I want to see happen?” Because they are empowered in this way, associates often help innovate new, creative solutions that can be deployed to improve the patient experience.

First and foremost, we identify a friction point for our clients. At Adena Health, patients were waiting unnecessarily during registration, a dissatisfying experience. We proactively took the opportunity to look at how we could streamline processes and reduce that issue. To do so, we:

  • Increased adoption of virtual registration (via MyChart). It’s not just about Epic, it’s about maximizing your EHR to work for you. For Adena, that required understanding the barriers in place. Then, in order to increase adoption, we first had to get patients to understand the benefits of virtual registration themselves. We did that by helping clients have the right educational information available at kiosk so patients could understand what the new process was and what was expected of them.
  • Put a system for instant MyChart activation into place. Associates sat side by side with patients to help them set up their accounts. Through a combination of these efforts, Adena increased conversion rates by 35%, and exceeded its goal of 50% patient adoption within 12 months — an accomplishment even Epic commended.
  • Implemented creative ideas driven by associates. The idea for the instant activation of MyChart was proposed by the patient access staff on the ground at Adena, based on their observation that many registering patients struggled with the technology. Staff also noticed that there was often a huge line waiting to register. Out of this came innovative ideas to allow for digital tools, self-check-in and even physical rerouting of patients in the on-site location. Each of these changes helped improve overall patient satisfaction, and the system saw an 80% decrease in average wait time for outpatient registration.

Improving the financial experience for patients

We see so many organizations that are hesitant to even bring up financial issues, but point of service conversations don’t have to diminish the patient experience — they can actually enhance it. Patient-friendly account resolution helps patients feel prepared to resolve their liability. Through open and transparent communication and education, we reduce continuous worries, like a patient concerned about receiving a bill in the mail after a healthcare encounter.

I think that a well-performing revenue cycle can have a significant impact on the patient experience. It’s the first interaction that a patient or a family member may have in its introduction into the hospital. Once that interaction is complete from a provision of care prospective, you’re one of the last people that our patients or families may have interaction within terms of questions on bill calls to customer service, so the functions that [Ensemble provides] are very, very important.

CFO, Nicklaus Children’s Hospital

At Ensemble, we make sure the right tools are in place so that associates can provide relevant and accurate information to patients and drive successful collections. We provide cohesive training and education to empower these professionals to be subject matter experts on patient experience. This also means providing access to tools like a real-time eligibility tool integrated in a HIS; a patient liability estimator to provide real-time estimates on out-of-pocket liability; and thorough reporting so systems can track how far they’ve come, where their opportunities are, and where to focus future efforts.

Ensuring consistency is key. We provide process documentation and scripting for all locations and areas (ED/OP/IP) to ensure that consistent conversations are taking place regardless of whether it is a scheduled outpatient, walk-in lab or scheduled physical therapy.

We also use data to understand and identify patient issues and resolve them quickly. Whether this is done through education of staff, the creation of job aids or other ways of empathetic communicating with patients on the ground, the results prove this approach out: After implementing a POS collection program, Bon Secours Mercy Health saw a 20% increase in pre-service collections with a consistent quarterly increase in patient satisfaction scores.

When we implement patient-friendly financial processes, associates are empowered to resolve patient concerns quickly and confidently.

The bottom line

We partner with some of the best clinicians in the world who provide the best care experiences — but the logistical and financial bookends to those clinical care experiences should be just as excellent. A focus on patient experience can’t be a set-and-forget process; patients should feel that they are being heard and valued before, during and after their care experiences. We want each touchpoint to be consistent and positive.

To do this, we analyze, intervene and educate appropriately. We measure to understand how patients feel, and then we consistently outline and define solutions to address their pain points.

You can’t do revenue cycle management well without doing patient experience well, but when patient experience is done right, you get results that stretch across both the revenue cycle and patient satisfaction. We know this, and that’s why patient experience is part of Ensemble’s DNA.

By weaving empathy, empowerment and engagement into everything we do, Ensemble’s approach improves patient experience in measurable ways. One strategic end-to-end partnership with a non-profit integrated medical services provider led to greater than a 10% improvement in month-over-month patient experience survey scores. Similarly, with focused training, education and engagement, another hospital system saw a 4% increase in Top Box Scores, which measure the percentage of respondents who gave the highest response possible on the survey scale.

A focus on the patient experience is not just a nice addition to revenue cycle management; it’s fundamental to ensuring patients have a better registration experience, a better financial experience and higher satisfaction with their care all around.

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]]> Why Patient Experience is Everything​ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLDSayk3zEg#new_tab Wed, 12 Jun 2024 20:54:17 +0000 https://www.ensemblehp.com/?p=13405 Hear from an experienced healthcare leader on why every interaction matters.​ … Read More

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]]> What Is Patient Experience + Why Is it Important to Healthcare Providers? https://www.ensemblehp.com/blog/what-is-the-patient-experience/ Fri, 02 Jun 2023 22:26:34 +0000 https://www.ensemblehp.com/?p=10805 Physicians, medical staff and organizations are responsible for a positive patient experience. Learn about the benefits this can provide. … Read More

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The medical profession is one that requires face-to-face interactions with patients on a daily basis. However, it’s not just the physician who’s responsible for creating a positive patient experience. The medical organization itself has a lot to do with how satisfied patients are, including facilitating a positive patient experience. Healthcare organizations should strive to provide an all-around positive experience for various reasons, from patient retention to improved staff morale. Determining how well your organization is performing within the patient’s perception first requires an understanding of the patient experience, how it differs from patient satisfaction and how to improve it, if and when necessary.

What Is Patient Experience?

“Patient experience” is a broadly used phrase with different meanings amongst different healthcare organizations. Unfortunately, there isn’t one standard definition, which can make it difficult to provide and measure. The Beryl Institute breaks down the multifaceted concept of patient experience into four critical themes: personal interactions, the organization’s culture, patient and family perceptions and the continuum of care.

The patient experience encompasses a wide range of interactions patients have within the healthcare system, with doctors, nurses and staff at hospitals, physician practices or other healthcare facilities. Patients place a lot of value on their experience when receiving care, such as whether appointments are timely, they’re provided with easy access to their health information and if healthcare providers are good at communicating necessary information.

For any organization looking to provide more patient-centered care, patient experience is essential. You need to be aware of the level of respectful, responsive care each patient receives. This includes how well the patient’s needs are met and values respected, as well as how much the health system values patient safety and effective care. For larger organizations, this information can be gauged through surveys and questionnaires, such as the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS).

The Difference Between Patient Experience + Patient Satisfaction

While they sound similar (and are often used interchangeably), the patient experience is a different concept than patient satisfaction. Here are the key differences:

  • Patient satisfaction: Assesses whether a patient’s expectations regarding the healthcare visit were met. This can vary per patient based on their unique expectations as to how care should be delivered.
  • Patient experience: Determines whether specific, expected actions were taken during each visit or appointment, such as receiving clear communication or detailed instructions from the healthcare professionals before leaving, or being greeted by a staff member upon walking into the office.

While both play into creating a positive visit for patients, creating a positive patient experience is much more about determining set experience standards everyone should follow and doesn’t necessarily change based on treatments or reason for visiting.

Why Patient Experience Matters

Although the health system exists to help people, stepping into a healthcare setting can often make people anxious and uncomfortable. Creating a positive patient experience can do so much to help alleviate this and provide the following benefits:

  • Better patient safety, improved clinical outcomes and higher patient satisfaction scores
  • Shorter hospital stays and reduced readmissions
  • Greater equity in access to care (i.e., translation services, offering specific-needs support, etc.)
  • Improved staff morale and motivation leading to improved recruitment and retention
  • Greater patient engagement and empowerment related to their own healthcare
  • Reduced risks within the office, hospital, etc. (i.e., effective cleaning and maintenance to reduce or remove slip and trip hazards)

Patients who have a positive experience will generally feel more comfortable and less anxious during their visit, allowing for better engagement when discussing their health and care, supporting a better patient outcome.

Influential Factors for Patient Experience

Doctors and nurses are typically the ones with the most patient interaction on a daily basis. Still, when patients come in, they’re noticing much more — is the facility clean and maintained? Are administrative staff courteous and informative? Is the billing department helpful when questioned about affording patient care?

Obviously, the physician-patient relationship is an essential piece for a positive patient experience as they take charge of providing treatment options, preventative plans and discharge instructions. But those behind the scenes can help — or hinder — the overall patient care experience, even after a positive interaction with medical staff. These can include:

  • Administration: Reception, appointment letters, follow-up communications
  • Facilities Management: Food, cleaning, environment, parking, bathrooms
  • Clinical: Pharmacy, treatment, ward rounds, consultations, care delivery

Top Causes of Negative Patient Experience

If you find your organization is lacking in patient experience, there are a few common causes that could be to blame. While the following aren’t the only possible contributors to a negative patient experience, they should be the first places to review when looking to make improvements.

Limited Resources

When physicians have limited resources at their disposal, it can make practicing efficiently more difficult and leave patients with less options for care access. Are patients offered various ways to contact medical staff, such as over the phone, through a patient portal or via email? Are accessibility and diversity needs met such as language options and available primary and urgent care locations? How is the phone system handled? Can patients reach a person right away, or do they need to be processed through a call center or machine service? Can patients easily pay their medical bills online, over the phone or in-office? Doctors and medical staff are unable to provide the level of care they need if patients are unable to reach them in the first place.

Resistance to Change

Healthcare is a quickly evolving concept, constantly introducing new technologies and new processes. If at any point, anyone from a single nurse to the entire organization, resists necessary workflow changes, it can quickly sour the patient experience. Resistance to change can result in care delays, poor record-keeping and even an inability to collect payments for medical care effectively. If and when a new process is introduced, staff must be thoroughly trained on how to use it properly and attention must be given to ensure everyone follows the process.

Lack of Awareness

When it comes to patient care and services, there are a variety of options available to get the most out of their care. However, if medical staff are unaware of available services, patients aren’t getting access to the best healthcare support they can. A physician’s lack of awareness of available patient services could be limiting the usage of things like remote monitoring offered by pharmaceutical companies. Physicians should be educated about all available avenues of care, and patients should be offered any potential solutions that may be helpful for them.

Complex Healthcare System

Anytime complexities are introduced, the process becomes more difficult from start to finish. Patients need to be presented with a straightforward process, from making an appointment to receiving treatments and paying the bills. If they’re given the runaround regarding how to complete their care, it’s going to create a negative patient experience. No one likes to feel like they aren’t receiving a straight answer or as if they are being tossed around to different contacts to repeatedly retell their story, only to be directed elsewhere again. Processes should be examined to ensure they’re as straightforward and direct as possible.

Health Disparities

Empathy is important in healthcare, but disparities can indicate a lack of empathy for specific groups of people, whether due to socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation. If the medical or administrative staff at any level of the health system lack empathy for particular groups of patients, their concerns and symptoms could be dismissed, leaving them without the answers or treatments they need, leading to a poor patient experience. Everyone should treat each patient fairly and provide the same, high level of care regardless of their demographics.

Strategies for Improving Overall Patient Experience

A poor patient experience shouldn’t be ignored. Healthcare professionals and organizations should always be looking to maintain and improve patient experience. Thankfully, there are strategies you can implement to improve it.

  • Maximize efficiencies to prevent delays or patient wait times by assessing your current operational and patient flow.
  • Focus on empathy through effective, caring and compassionate communication.
  • Listen to patients without interrupting.
  • Assure patients understand their treatment plan once discussed.
  • Overestimate the time it will take for evaluation and diagnosis, and over-deliver by accomplishing it more efficiently.
  • Keep patients informed if/when delays occur.
  • Address any patient anxieties and help them feel at ease and more comfortable.
  • Utilize the “teach-back method” when providing discharge instructions to confirm the patient’s knowledge.
  • Modernize patient access with more digital touchpoints.
  • Don’t forget about the wellness and morale of your staff and units — happy staff equates to happy patients.

Improve Patient Experience With Improved Revenue Cycle Management

Creating a positive patient experience is absolutely essential, from patient safety to healthcare quality. While the staff has a big role to play, so do the processes your organization has in place. One excellent way of improving the patient experience is by having an improved revenue cycle management process and with the help of Ensemble Health Partners, you can easily put your focus back on patients — not on their payments.

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]]> How to Engage Employees + Ultimately Improve Patient Experience https://www.ensemblehp.com/blog/how-to-engage-employees-ultimately-improve-patient-experience/ Tue, 28 Feb 2023 15:14:43 +0000 https://www.ensemblehp.com/?p=10519 Make employee engagement a top priority for the effect it will have on your employees as well as your patients and community. … Read More

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Keeping patients satisfied as well as healthy is critical for healthcare organizations. A patient’s level of satisfaction during a visit can affect their health outcomes, impact their decision to return to that provider and influence their overall perception of that organization.

Healthcare providers know clinical care quality is a key driver of patient satisfaction. Less commonly considered is the organization’s level of employee engagement and how that ultimately effects the patient experience.

The higher the level of engagement, the more willing your employees are to deliver an outstanding experience to your patients. Engaged employees who are happy and interested in their roles will be much more invested in exceeding expectations of their leaders and your patients, friendlier when dealing with patients face-to-face or over the phone and more productive in their day-to-day responsibilities.

So, consider your employee engagement program central to your patient experience strategy.

Three Levels of Employee Engagement

What does it mean to be engaged? An employee’s engagement can range from neutral sentiment about a company to high motivation and drive for success. Whether employees are motivated impacts productivity, quality of work and the experience of those around them, including patients.

You can think of employees as falling into one of three categories:

  • Engaged – satisfied with the company and motivated to work hard and do a good job
  • Unengaged – getting by doing the minimum, but not motivated to do more
  • Disengaged – previously engaged; but now so unhappy it shows in their work and influences those around them

How to Establish + Execute a Successful Employee Engagement Program

Start (but don’t stop) with a survey.

Engagement surveys are an easy way to check the pulse of a team and learn more about the key drivers of your employees’ satisfaction. Consider using short quarterly surveys, or a larger biannual or annual survey to prevent survey fatigue and provide enough time to respond to results.

Surveys are meant to evoke discussion, invite improvement and foster collaboration. Without follow-through and commitment to action, surveys can fall short. Leaders must understand the importance of spending time with their team members and learning what is important to them. One of the best things a leader can do is ask open-ended questions to maintain a clear understanding of their team’s needs, the effectiveness of interventions and additional methods to improve engagement.

Establish an Employee Advisory Group (EAG).

An EAG is a highly effective way to give employees a voice and the ability to contribute to organizational decision-making, which is a proven method of driving employee satisfaction. To be most effective, an EAG needs a sense of purpose, doable tasks with a timeline, recognition and a belief its input will be valued and impactful. Even the singular step of creating and effectively overseeing an EAG is likely to have a significantly positive impact on engagement and ultimately patient experience.

Read our 4 Tips for Forming an Employee Advisory Group

Invest in development.

Incorporate development into your organization’s engagement strategy to help employees become proficient in their responsibilities and gain additional skills. Build a consistent culture of development by identifying and communicating core competencies employees need to be successful. You should also provide a variety of training and upskilling opportunities, empowering employees to self-manage their careers in collaboration with their leaders.

Make sure mobility and advancement opportunities, as well as the steps needed to achieve them, are well-known for all roles throughout your organization, including non-clinical and administrative roles.

Make recognizing employees a habit.

Regularly recognizing employees is a great way to make employees feel they and the work they do is valued. Encourage praise and shout-outs on company communication channels. Set up an employee-of-the-month program or similar awards to spotlight engaged employees and give them an opportunity to share their pride outside of your organization. Simply taking time to acknowledge those who are going above and beyond can have positive ripple effects across your organization.

Strengthen the sense of community.

Encourage participation in opportunities that align with your organization’s core values like volunteering, investing in employee support funds, donating to charities or getting involved in the community in other ways. Creating a culture of community and giving back not only helps those on the receiving end while elevating employee engagement, but it also reinforces a positive brand reputation in your community.

Key Takeaways

Your employee engagement program should be central to your patient experience strategy.

Satisfied teams promote higher patient experiences because they live and work in environments that foster empathy, engagement and empowerment. Those engaged employees then emulate that experience for patients. Make employee engagement a top priority, not only for its immediate effects, but the domino effect it will have throughout your organization and community.

Susan Milligan, CHAM, CRCR, is the patient experience director for Ensemble Health Partners. Informed by her experiences in healthcare and as the mother of a child with Down syndrome, she is passionate about helping healthcare organizations improve their patient experience through empathy, empowerment and engagement.  

 

 

These materials are for general informational purposes only. These materials do not, and are not intended to, constitute legal or compliance advice, and you should not act or refrain from acting based on any information provided in these materials. Neither Ensemble Health Partners, nor any of its employees, are your lawyers. Please consult with your own legal counsel or compliance professional regarding specific legal or compliance questions you have.

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