The importance of patients having a good experience during their outpatient care

Photo: Tim Mossholder

The experiences of patients are extremely crucial to the ways in which health centers around the world operate. The main goal of each health center should be to provide the best possible healthcare journey for each patient. The range of interactions that patients have with the healthcare system all plays a big part in the overall experience of the patients. Let's now take a look at the importance of a good patient experience during the outpatient part of the care center.

The difference between inpatient and outpatient care

To begin with, we should first focus on differentiating between inpatient and outpatient care. The main difference is how long a patient must remain in the facility where they have the procedure done. Inpatient care requires overnight hospitalization. However, outpatient care means the patient is free to go home. Of course, there are both pros and cons to each of these two care systems.

Outpatient care has some major advantages such as the fact that patients are able to rest and recover in the comfort of their own homes. Furthermore, they can enjoy their own food, beds, etc. Most importantly, outpatient procedures almost always cost less than comparable inpatient procedures. So, why is it so important for a patient to have a good experience during outpatient care?

The importance of having a good outpatient care experience

The patient experience is an integral component of healthcare quality. Receiving quality care improves the patient experience. By quality care, we mean getting timely appointments, easy access to information, and good communication with health care providers. These factors are all crucial because patients that are not in a health center but rather at their homes, need to be able to contact their healthcare providers quickly and efficiently at all times. With a better patient experience, a health center can get more patients and successfully provide each patient with quality healthcare services. Patient experience is crucial and each health center strives to make it better and improved so that the patients go through their healthcare journeys easily and stress-free. So, why is this essential for outpatient care? Well, let's take a closer look.

During outpatient care, a patient needs to be able to communicate with their health center when needed. They need to be able to receive all of the information regarding their healthcare journey accurately and on time. Health centers, therefore, need to focus on improving their communication with their patients. Furthermore, they need to focus on making their healthcare services more accessible. Thanks to the constant advances in medical research and technologies, many treatments, such as physical rehabilitation, can be done as outpatient care. However, health centers need to be able to deliver a fast, efficient, and easy means of delivering their services and communicating with their patients.

How AI can help

Now that we have covered some of the major differences between inpatient and outpatient care as well as defined the importance of having a good experience during outpatient care, let's take a look at some of the new and innovative technologies that can help health centers improve their relationship with patients and increase the efficiency of their medical services.

AI can definitely help. With new technologies such as natural language processing and machine learning, health clinics can utilize AI such as Patricia created by our team at Eniax, which focuses 100% on healthcare interactions and communication with patients. Such AI can be used to monitor patients during their outpatient care as well as use many of its online services to better improve the efficiency of your health center. We can see in many different areas of our lives that AI is the future. The constant digitalization of healthcare also showcases this. Therefore, to provide the patients with the much-needed, good patient experience during outpatient care, health centers should focus on improving their communication, making their services more accessible, and making day-to-day tasks such as scheduling much simpler by utilizing AI such as Patricia for example.