Seven ways to improve patient satisfaction

The key to patient satisfaction is employee satisfaction! When your staff is happy and engaged, they are more likely to treat patients in ways that drive their satisfaction. It’s one key reason why it pays to focus on morale at the office. Not to mention its impact on work productivity-your people will greatly impact your ability to attract and retain both patients and employees, thus influencing the reputation of your medical practice. 

There are numerous strategies you can employ to drive employee engagement and satisfaction. But first, start by assessing their current level of contentment and motivation. I have helped many offices assess their employee engagement and often discover that there is a great disparity between how the physicians and leadership perceive employee feelings versus what they hear from the employees themselves (and you can probably guess that the employees’ assessments of morale and engagement are typically lower than what the physicians perceive). By assessing current levels of engagement, you communicate to your people that you are interested in learning more about their experience and about the workplace culture.

There are several assessments on the marketplace, all with varying degrees of complexity (and expense). What is critical to success is to follow-up after the survey. The best way to trigger cynicism and distrust is to ask people how they feel and then not do anything about it. So be sure that you have a plan to communicate the results and develop action plans based on what the employees tell you.While compensation is important to people, its ability to motivate others has its limitations. Intrinsic factors play a more significant role in employee satisfaction (as long as people feel they are being fairly compensated).

Here are seven key strategies to enhance employee satisfaction and engagement (and cost little to nothing to employ):