Patient Experience Explained: From First Touchpoint to Follow-Up

Healthcare professionals have become more invested in offering a higher quality of patient-centered care across the entire patient experience (PX). Patients’ expectations of their healthcare experience now go beyond just having a great physician who can accurately diagnose and treat their conditions.

Patients want to easily book or reschedule appointments, ask important questions about their health, and receive empathetic and informed care from everyone they interact with. Here, we’ll discuss how healthcare systems can improve the entire patient experience, from the first touchpoint to follow-up.

What Is Patient Experience?

You may have an outstanding doctor, but you might think twice about seeing them if booking appointments, getting test results, or requesting a prescription refill is a nightmare. The sum of all interactions a patient has within your healthcare system makes up their entire patient experience. This includes clinicians, staff, technology, and the environment itself.

PX is ultimately defined by the patient’s perception of their care and is characterized by:

• Quality, empathetic communication from all staff
• Timeliness of care that prioritizes patient safety and well-being
• Empathy and knowledge of providers
• Ease of accessing services
• Follow-up and coordination experience

Factors That Influence Patient Experience (PX)

Patient experience is multifaceted and influenced by several interconnected factors. Let’s look at each and how they play a role in the overall PX.

1. Clinical communication

Communication with office staff, contact center agents, and patient care providers is a significant factor in how patients view their experience with you. Patients expect clarity, empathy, and respect during interactions with doctors, nurses, and medical assistants. Increasingly, patients expect shared decision-making that incorporates their own preferences and concerns.

2. Administrative interactions

A patient’s experience with administrative tasks will influence how they perceive overall healthcare quality. This includes:

• Ease of scheduling appointments
• Accuracy of billing and insurance processes
• Length of wait times
• Availability of appointments
• Time spent with providers

3. Digital touchpoints (eHealth)

Healthcare is increasingly digital, with telehealth options and patient portals like Epic and MyChart allowing patients to communicate directly with providers.

Healthcare portals, for example, allow patients to access their medical test results almost immediately without waiting for a follow-up, with one study finding that over 95% of patients wanted their results released immediately.

Quality virtual consultations also offer convenient healthcare options for patients who may have trouble making it into your office. However, digital literacy support is essential as healthcare shifts toward these online portals and telehealth options. This is particularly important for older populations, who may need assistance with learning how to navigate the tools.

4. Environment of care

No one wants to see a doctor in a run-down, unclean facility. The healthcare setting’s cleanliness, safety, and comfort are crucial for PX. Patients should feel secure having sensitive discussions and not feel like others will overhear them.

Consider accessibility for individuals with disabilities or potential language barriers. This may involve using translation applications and having translators on hand in large healthcare settings.

5. Continuity and coordination

Continuity of care is directly tied to better patient outcomes, so prioritize seamless transitions between care settings.

For example, a patient who needs surgery may:

• Have their initial consultation and sign their consent forms in the physician’s office
• Receive information about their surgery date and instructions from the hospital
• Undergo surgery within a hospital system
• Recover for a day at the hospital before recovering at home
• Get a phone call from the surgeon or their office several days after their surgery

The patient’s care should be exceptional across all of these touchpoints. Follow-up communication and ongoing support are essential for all patients, especially those with chronic conditions or ongoing diagnoses.

6. Emotional support

Visiting a healthcare provider can be anxiety-inducing. Patients may be in pain, scared, and even embarrassed or anxious to talk about their symptoms.

All staff must be empathetic and patient throughout the entire experience to help put patients at ease. This can include validating a patient’s concerns while still reassuring them that they’re in great hands and are being taken seriously.

The Patient Journey: A Framework for Mapping Experience

Understanding PX requires mapping the entire journey patients undergo. Key phases of PX include the following.

Phase	Touchpoints
Awareness & Access	Finding a provider, scheduling an appointment, and asking insurance questions
Check-In & Waiting	Reception experience, wait times, and facility comfort
Clinical Encounter	Staff communication, exam room environment, and getting treatment plans based on shared decisions
Post-Visit Follow-Up	Getting test and lab results, prescriptions, and aftercare or discharge instructions
Ongoing Engagement	Chronic care support, communication through patient portals, patient surveys, and feedback

Solutions to Improve PX

There have been significant advancements in healthcare CX innovation in recent years, so let’s look at five solutions that can help you improve PX quickly.

1. Patient-centered communication training

Invest in training that helps your staff and all clinicians practice skills like empathy, active listening, and inclusive communication strategies. These strategies can directly improve patient engagement and establish trust in your team of providers.

Many healthcare organizations encourage teams to take communication classes as part of their ongoing education requirements. Multiple organizations, including the Academy of Communication in Healthcare and Johns Hopkins, offer training programs you can access or purchase.

2. Unified communications platforms

Integrated communication platforms like Nextiva can centralize messaging, calls, and video across all departments. This allows for:

• Faster responses to patient inquiries
• Reduced handoffs and fewer miscommunications.
• Useful 360-degree views of the patient record

When choosing a unified communications platform, it’s essential to choose a secure platform with healthcare-specific solutions. Nextiva, for example, is HIPAA-compliant and offers exceptional security features to align with healthcare call center best practices.

3. Feedback-driven improvement

Collecting patient feedback is the best way to determine how you can improve PX across their entire care experience.

You can use HCAHPS surveys, direct patient feedback, and online reviews to:

• Identify potential gaps in service
• Create targeted quality initiatives across the entire team
• Inform patients of actions taken to improve their experience, effectively closing the loop and showing you value their feedback

4. Digital front door solutions

Modernize first impressions with digital check-in, chatbot assistance, and automated scheduling. These digital touchpoints can offer convenient self-service options for patients, ensuring they don’t get stuck in phone trees or long hold queues.

They’re also popular across all generations, with a recent study finding that over 90% of all age groups said they’d use self-service booking options if they were available. This can contribute to a positive patient experience and reduce administrative work for your team.

5. Omnichannel support

Omnichannel support allows patients to communicate securely across their preferred channels. Today, healthcare settings should consider leveraging omnichannel platforms that support phone, email, text, and video.

Unifying these touchpoints ensures smoother interactions and context retention across visits and channels.

Make sure that any platforms you leverage are HIPAA-compliant. For example, phone systems for medical offices should have features like secure call recording and encrypted voicemail transcription.

How AI Is Enhancing the Patient Experience

While the human touch will always be essential in healthcare settings, artificial intelligence has offered new ways to enhance the patient experience. When used strategically, these advancements can reduce operational costs, improve efficiency, and boost PX.

Let’s look at the AI features that are increasingly important.

Conversational AI

Intelligent interactive voice response (IVR) systems and chatbots can help contact center agents assess inquiries and direct callers to the right department.

IVR, for example, can direct standard appointment booking to your office’s contact center agents and send urgent healthcare questions to an in-office nurse for triage. The nurse can determine if the patient with an urgent symptom needs to come into the office for an appointment, if they need emergency care, or if they should have a follow-up in a few days. As a result, conversational AI is essential for reducing overall patient wait times, freeing up human staff to resolve complex issues that actually require their attention.

Predictive analytics

Predictive analytics are advancing rapidly and can understand nuances in patient interactions and behavioral patterns with impressive accuracy. For example, algorithms may flag high-risk patients with concerning symptoms or those who are likely to be potential no-shows. This allows for better planning and proactive outreach from your team, ultimately improving results in patient outcomes.

Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis is an invaluable tool if you want to improve the overall patient experience with exceptional agility.

AI tools can now assess a patient’s tone and language during calls, feedback, or other interactions to identify dissatisfaction before the issue escalates. In many cases, these tools can help mitigate potential issues by offering suggestions to human agents. You can use this information to quickly address pain points within the patient care experience.

Virtual health assistants

Virtual health assistants can simultaneously reduce admin work for your staff and improve CX with a variety of tasks, including:

• Ensuring patients are prepared and checked in for their appointment
• Helping patients improve medication adherence
• Recommending lifestyle changes post-treatment

These health assistants can answer patient questions, make recommendations, and reduce admin work. In many cases, they’re available through patient portals.

Nextiva’s AI-powered CX platform already offers many of these features, integrating patient communications, automating self-service tasks, and generating real-time insights to help healthcare teams act swiftly and compassionately. Our platform is also HIPAA compliant, making it an effective solution for healthcare offices.

Why This All Matters for Healthcare Organizations

Improving the patient experience will help with retention rates, but it also offers a few distinct advantages that shouldn’t be ignored, including:

• Improved health outcomes: Engaged patients are more likely to adhere to treatment plans and get preventive care, which improves their health outcomes.
• Financial sustainability: Higher PX scores correlate with better reimbursement rates, lower readmissions, and a stronger organizational reputation.
• Operational efficiency: Streamlining communications and automating low-complexity tasks frees staff to focus on value-added care.

Optimize the Patient Experience With Nextiva

Nextiva is a unified communications and CX platform that healthcare providers can rely on to deliver seamless, human-centered care.

Here’s what helps Nextiva stand apart:

• Omnichannel excellence: Patients can call, chat, email, or schedule appointments through one integrated system.
• AI-enhanced support: From intelligent IVR systems to real-time analytics dashboards, Nextiva helps teams identify friction and act quickly.
• Scalability: Whether you’re a clinic or an extensive hospital network, Nextiva adapts to your needs as they scale up and down in volume without complexity.
• HIPAA compliance: Our HIPAA-compliant platform ensures data security and patient confidentiality across every interaction.

Nextiva offers exceptional reliability and uptime, so you can offer round-the-clock support to your customers as needed. Learn more about Nextiva’s healthcare solutions today.