4 Concrete Actions to Improve Patient Satisfaction in Healthcare

Assessing patient satisfaction with their healthcare experience is not simply a matter of courtesy. Patient satisfaction can directly influence the reputation, financial performance, and quality of care provided by a healthcare facility.

However, many healthcare managers are reluctant to implement new initiatives aimed at improving the patient experience in their facilities for fear that this will place an additional burden on their already overworked teams, which is entirely understandable at first glance.

However, it is entirely possible to optimize the healthcare journey and care pathway for patients without adding to the daily workload of staff. By taking a few key actions, healthcare facilities can tangibly improve patient satisfaction. In fact, some actions can even reduce the workload on staff!

In this article, we present four concrete strategies for increasing patient satisfaction in your healthcare facility without increasing your teams' workload.

Improving Patient Satisfaction: An Underestimated Strategic Lever

Patient satisfaction generates tangible benefits on several levels:

• ✅ Clinically: a satisfied patient is more likely to follow their treatment and actively engage in their healthcare journey, which translates into better outcomes and fewer rehospitalizations.

• ✅ Organizationally: Hospitals that score well on patient experience enjoy a stronger reputation, increased word-of-mouth referrals, and greater patient loyalty.

• ✅ Finally, financially: Deloitte has shown that health institutions offering an excellent patient experience achieve higher net margins on average, while reducing staff turnover and medical-legal risks.

In other words, investing in patient satisfaction simultaneously improves the quality of care, organizational efficiency, and profitability of the healthcare institution.

And contrary to popular belief, improving patient satisfaction does not necessarily require major organizational changes or costly investments. Often, it is small, targeted actions that make a big difference in the overall care journey. The challenge is to implement practices that enrich the patient experience while respecting the time and energy of the care teams.

Let's continue with the actions recommended by our patient experience specialists.

1. Focus On Clear and Empathetic Communication With Your Patients

Unsurprisingly, communication is often the primary factor influencing patient satisfaction. Investing in ongoing staff training to develop active listening and communication skills does not require significant resources, but provides immediate benefits.

Patients feel more heard, understood, and respected throughout their care journey, which contributes to:

• ✅ Increasing their trust and commitment to their healthcare professional as well as to the healthcare facility.

• ✅ Reducing the number of reminders or requests for information, thereby lightening the administrative burden on staff.

📝 Concrete example: some hospitals have introduced 15-minute mini-workshops on "empathic communication" during team meetings. The result: a measurable increase in patient satisfaction has been observed, without overburdening staff.

2. Use Technology to Identify Areas for Improvement

Collecting patient feedback is essential to understanding how patients actually experience and perceive their care. However, these surveys are still often conducted manually and in a labor-intensive manner (e.g., on paper), which places a considerable burden on staff who then have to process and analyze the data manually. The result: few usable responses and a feeling of administrative overload.

Fortunately, there are now technological solutions available to healthcare institutions that are specifically designed to greatly simplify the collection, processing, and analysis of patient experience data. This is particularly the case with PREMs (Patient-Reported Experience Measures).

With PREMs tools, healthcare institutions can now automate the vast majority of tasks related to measuring patient satisfaction, such as:

• Sending patient experience surveys after each consultation, entirely digitally, by email and/or text message;

• Analyzing the data collected, in particular using artificial intelligence.

With PREMs, not only is patient satisfaction data accessible in real time, but response rates are also much higher. For example, with Lime's PREMs solution, response rates are five times higher than with manual collection.

Artificial intelligence (AI) now used to enhance patient satisfaction data

Today, artificial intelligence (AI) contributes significantly to digital health in a variety of ways.

Some PREMs solutions, such as the Lime platform, have artificial intelligence features that allow healthcare facilities to benefit from concrete findings based on real facts by asking questions directly to an intelligent assistant. For example: What are the three most important issues in our institution in terms of patient experience?

We are no longer talking about viewing a simple overall report, but rather about taking full advantage of the data collected.

3. Personalize Your Patients’ Healthcare Journey

Each patient's healthcare journey is unique. However, standardized approaches are often applied, sometimes neglecting this diversity of needs. To truly increase patient satisfaction, it is essential to both personalize care and encourage patients to be actively involved in their choices.

Technological tools such as PROMs and PREMs offer a wealth of information to help personalize the healthcare journey. The patient experience data collected through these tools allows:

• ✅ Clinicians to tailor their interventions to the priorities expressed by patients (pain, anxiety, functional limitations, etc.);

• ✅ Managers to quickly identify friction points in the care pathway.

However, personalization is not solely based on technology: it also involves transforming the caregiver-patient relationship. Including patients in decisions, giving them access to their results, and encouraging them to ask questions makes them active participants in their care journey. This approach reduces misunderstandings, improves treatment adherence, and decreases avoidable rehospitalizations.

📝 Concrete example: In Quebec, the CIUSSS de l'Estrie (public health institution) has implemented co-construction initiatives with patients, which has made it possible to offer better-adapted services while strengthening trust in the healthcare system.

4. Improve Accessibility and Continuity Throughout the Entire Healthcare Journey

A patient may receive excellent clinical care but remain dissatisfied if their healthcare journey is punctuated by irritants: patient satisfaction is strongly influenced by how smoothly the patient navigates between the different stages of their overall healthcare journey.

Improving healthcare accessibility means first and foremost reducing friction:

• Simplify the appointment-making process.

• Reduce avoidable wait times.

• Avoiding the need for patients to repeat their history at each stage.

From an organizational standpoint, the continuity of clinical information between departments and healthcare professionals is crucial to providing a consistent and secure healthcare journey.

An accessible and continuously supported care pathway does not necessarily require more resources: often, it is simply a matter of coordination, clarification of roles, and the use of the right digital tools. The benefits are twofold: increased patient satisfaction and a reduction in the burden of duplication and organizational irritants for staff.

Denmark, a Model of Digital Health in Terms of Patient Satisfaction

To illustrate the actions presented above in concrete terms, Denmark offers an excellent example of successful digital transformation in healthcare. By focusing on a digital health approach, this country has demonstrated that it is possible to improve patient satisfaction while reducing the workload on teams.

Its 2018-2022 national digital health strategy aimed to make the healthcare system both fully digital and deeply person-centered (“inherently digital, inherently personal”). The goal was clear: to streamline the healthcare journey for citizens and simplify the work of professionals.

The impact on the patient experience and healthcare staff

This transformation has had a tangible impact:

• For patients: a simpler, more transparent, and more secure healthcare journey, which builds trust and engagement.

• For staff: fewer repetitive administrative tasks and better coordination of information, allowing them to devote more time to clinical relationships.

The Danish example clearly shows that integrating technology can improve patient satisfaction without putting additional pressure on teams, which is exactly the balance that healthcare institutions are looking for.

Improve Patient Satisfaction While Reducing Your Teams’ Workload With Lime

When properly measured and managed, patient satisfaction becomes a real strategic lever for healthcare institutions. It influences the quality of care, organizational reputation, and even financial performance.

These four actions demonstrate that it is possible to enrich the patient experience while freeing up time for caregivers. To achieve this, it is essential to listen to your patients!

Lime Health offers specialized solutions to support you, from data collection to comprehensive analysis of the facts gathered, with the goal of improving the patient experience at your healthcare facility as well as its performance.