Patient Engagement

Patient care remains the most vital priority for healthcare providers, a focus that has not changed as the industry itself has continued to evolve.

What has changed, though, is the control patients possess over their own treatment and care. Today patients are consumers of healthcare; more informed about care options and provider abilities, more vocal about their expectations for care, and more empowered to "shop around" for the best healthcare provider possible.

The healthcare industry is increasingly consumer-driven. And as is the case in any other industry, taking care of your customers' basic needs is not enough to create loyalty and emotional attachment between them and your organization.

Delivering exceptional patient care is a critical concern for providers. But healthcare organizations must meet and exceed patients' expectations of both the transactional and transformational aspects of care to create patient engagement.

What is Patient Engagement?

Satisfaction tends to be the term bestowed upon patients' feelings toward adequate healthcare. But a satisfied patient is not necessarily an engaged patient. Satisfaction is not enough.

Gallup's extensive research has identified the crucial characteristics of the emotional connections between healthcare providers and their best patients. These patients are not just "satisfied" or "loyal," they are emotionally attached to the provider's brands or services. They are engaged.

Gallup's Patient Engagement science allows hospitals and healthcare providers to measure not only the basic aspects of their patients' care experiences (via the HCAHPS survey), but also their patients' emotional attachment and connection to their employees, physicians, and the organization as a whole.

The complete Patient Engagement survey, comprised of HCAHPS questions and Gallup's customer engagement measurement items, meets HCAHPS participation requirements.

Why measure Patient Engagement?

As a healthcare provider, your facilities and employees can deliver care that meets your patients' basic expectations, yet fails to create a lasting emotional connection. This attachment -- Patient Engagement -- is born from healthcare organizations providing exceptional care, treatment, and service that perfectly transcend the needs and wants of their patients. And it is Patient Engagement that Gallup finds powerfully linked to financial performance.

In fact, Gallup research shows that measuring Patient Engagement -- the passion, pride, integrity, and confidence of a patient's care experience with an organization -- in concert with the HCAHPS items yields a stronger and more statistically significant relationship with optimized performance outcomes than using the HCAHPS survey alone. This includes critical business and care outcomes such as EBIDTA, mortality, contract labor rates, turnover, and high HCAHPS scores.

In addition to accurately measuring the impact of your care on your patients, Gallup's Patient Engagement science allows you to compare your organization's results in this vital area to others both within and outside the healthcare industry. Comparing against and learning from leading companies in other areas of business is crucial given today's consumer-driven healthcare climate.

For more information about how Gallup can help you engage your patients and transform satisfaction into loyalty and emotional attachment, please contact healthcare@gallup.com.