08/03/2018
DOES THE PATIENT EXPERIENCES DECIDE THE FUTURE OF MEDICAL PRACTICE !!!
A well known super speciality eye care centre situated in a number 2 city in the state of Telangana, India, and the only eye care centre with NABH accreditation in that place, offering all major eye care services . The centre is fully equipped with latest and world class medical (diagnostics, surgical) equipments/instruments and very good infrastructure like patient waiting areas, Consultant rooms, vision check chambers, operation theatres, in- patient facilities etc. The centre also boasts of well qualified and experienced doctors, optometrists and other support staff. The chairman of the hospital is also a reputed surgeon with nearly 25 years of successful surgical experience to his credit. With a burning desire to serve more patients, he called for a meeting with us to understand the market opportunities, the competition, latest trends in the industry and the ways to achieve his dream. That was around 2016 and the average surgeries that they were performing were around 8 to 9 surgeries per day.
We have visited the Eye care facility and reviewed the way they were functioning. After doing our preliminary analysis on the market and it’s dynamics, we have presented that the market opportunity is huge and even if they can target 10% of the market available for them, they should perform an average of 30 surgeries a day for the next 12 months. The next question from the chairman was obvious !!! When should we start our work on our way forward to achieve 30 surgeries a day ?
We are on board and we have planned to complete the first things first;
LEVEL-1...ACTION PLAN:
Preparing the entire eye care facility ready to understand the concept and provide ULTIMATE PATIENT EXPERIENCES every time the patients visit the facility and with an objective to retain evangelize every patient as their brand ambassador in the market.
Accordingly, training, monitoring, enabling and empowering all the employees towards achieving the GOAL of providing “DELIGHTFUL PATIENT EXPERIENCES” every time they transact with them (Clinical & Non-clinical).( which is more said than done)was addressed.
Creating PERFORMANCE DRIVEN work environment and by setting proper systems and processes from the basics of defining ROLES,RESPONSIBILITIES and SOPs for every role in the facility to monitor and improvise the outcomes at each touch point of the patient journeys to achieve sustainable growth. As we were keeping the centre ready to provide ULTIMATE PATIENT EXPERIENCES, by defining and mapping the patient journeys across the care continuum, we started working on the missing links to immediately increase the patient traffic;
As a first step towards achieving organisational goals, the process for empanelling the hospital in various important institutions and Govt supported schemes like EHS, Arogyasree, etc,. was completed. Conducting free screening camps with two dedicated teams working almost 5 days a week. Created data-base for all the patients/prospective patients and initiated steps to constantly engage the patient community with our services, achievements and other relevant content. Upgrading the technology and using the latest Hospital information systems is also another initiative put in place to keep the centre ahead of the competition.
After successful implementation of our first level action plan, we have reviewed our outcomes for the first/previous 12 months and the results are satisfactory. The centre could serve more patients almost an average of 24 surgeries a day from a single digit of around 7 surgeries a day almost 240% growth, besides considerable increase in out-patient traffic.
LEVEL-2....ACTION PLAN:
Now, in the second level action plan, to further increase our patient in-flows, we have planned various patient outreach initiatives.
1. Four dedicated teams to conduct free eye check-up camps , two teams to cover rural population and two more teams to cover urban population.
2. Focus on conducting CME programmes, symposia to referral doctors to strengthen referral segment.
3. Increased focus in digital efforts like SEO, SMM, education/educational programmes to patient communities through digital patient engagement and more, to reach out effectively, convert, retain and evangelise majority of the potential patients.
We have also set up a dedicated “PATIENT EXPERIENCES” office and appointed a special officer, who is fully trained and is capable of owning the responsibility to create “ ULTIMATE PATIENT EXPERIENCES” and who will oversee the implementation of all our activities towards achieving “ULTIMATE PATIENT EXPERIENCES” which will be our driving force to reach the organisation “VISION”.
Keep watching my blog.... Next time I will share some more successful case studies .
RATNAKAR REDDY.V.V
CEO.
BUSSENTIALS
91-9849297940.
