Patient Care Management In Healthcare

Customising and regularising the available patient database helps in retaining relations with regular patients of the hospital, says KM Vishnu Babu

Patient care is an area, which needs atmost attention in the healthcare arena. This article would shed some light on how hospitals and other healthcare centres, by following some simple rules, can bracket their patients by providing them with top-class services.

Retaining Regular Patients In OPD

It is always better and more profitable to have regular patients than newly-generated ones. Regular patients always promote services through their word of mouth. To retain regular patients, there should be well-organised plan to maintain relations with them. This can be done through customising and regularising the available patient database and to get detailed information on OP, IP, CT scan, cosmetic surgery and superspecialty services of patients visit on weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

Their information and their e-mail address will help send the latest and updated information and message through e-mail at any convenient time. The messages could be classified as:

(a) Greetings during national / state festivals and local functions.
(b) To greet patients at birthdays or marriage anniversaries.
(c) To inform their follow-up date for their surgery.
(d) Informing new updates in treatment / fee structure etc.

The above factors will help keep in touch with regular visiting patient and it would give a positive effect on the patient that there is 'feeling of care' towards their health.

Feedback Mechanism At OPD

An efficient feedback mechanism at the OPD will help understand patients' requirement in clinical and supportive services. This mechanism can be designed through placing visible suggestion registers / box, collecting information through well-designed questionnaire, by nominating active enumerator and forming Regular Patients Association (RPA) at the base hospital. A periodical meeting with RPA will gradually eliminate dissatisfaction among patients. At the same time, the feedback information will also help streamline working system according to latest requirements to serve better in this competitive environment.

Eliminating The Gaps

Normally, doctors are busy with their working schedules and surgeries. They may not be able to answer all queries raised by the patients, resulting in less communication. To eliminate such gaps and to increase the feeling of care to the patient, hospitals can create a 'feeling mechanism' — like recognising the patient from previous visit, enquiring on their family members, their health etc. Say for example, the doctor can note down health or personal problems of the patient's family at the corner of the medical record. He can recollect the information and enquire about that at the time of next visit. Such mechanism definitely helps.

Waiting Status Information

As a layman, if you enter in a hospital, what you will expect at first? You are registered at the OPD counter and now are waiting for the doctor's call. How long you have to wait? When you will be called? How many more steps and procedures you have to take? How long it will take to finish each procedure? Where is the ending point? Who will help to clear such doubts?

The question here is how can hospitals overcome such difficulties in the OPD counter? There are different ways which can be adopted to tackle such a situation, like keeping display boards showing how long the patient have to wait in each procedure, having direction signs at the OPD entrance etc, This can be showed through flow charts at the reception as shown in Chart I.

This chart may not be applicable in some hospitals' set up to meet patient requirement. For that, a minor study with your reception staff will help analyse patient flow, peak hour, doctors and technicians available etc, and after considering these factors, hospitals can design the flow.

Patient Counselling System

A satisfied patient will inform five people about the services; while an unsatisfied one will inform 10-15 people about poor service and inferior treatment. The unsatisfied patient will then begin to shop for the competitors. Thus, hospitals not only lose the unsatisfied patient to the competitor, but even worse, he will probably take many other potential clients with him/her. To overcome such difficulties, healthcare service providers should focus on strengthening communication systems. Patient counselling is one of the strongest tools that will help get satisfied patients and retain regular patients. It is always recommended to have separate patient counsellor for each specialty department to promote specialty service in the set-up. The following are the benefits that the hospitals will get, once they place a patient counsellor at the hospital:

1. Doubts on explanation given by doctors on patients’ their health and further treatment.
2. Review check-up date, treatment / surgery fee, admission details (for surgery patient).
3. Medication details, test / examination detail etc.

Alternatively, to keep in touch with the inpatients and to ensure their presence for surgery, communication can also be done by sending post cards (written reminder) periodically or by sending Short Message Service (SMS). In this way, hospitals can retain their regular patients and have healthy and better relations with them.

The writer is Hospital Administrator,
Chettinad Medical College Hospitals and Research Centre, Chennai.
E-mail: visba@rediffmail.com