The Impact of Care Coordination on Patient Satisfaction

Coordination is one of the four foundational pillars of care, along with first contact, comprehensiveness, and continuity. Many patients are looked after by multiple specialists, departments, and facilities. Without proper coordination, details may be missed, treatment plans may be delayed, and patient outcomes may be negatively impacted. Care coordination directly impacts patient satisfaction.

The key components of care coordination strategies are interoperability, efficient communication, and the ability to properly measure patient satisfaction metrics. Modern healthcare systems, with their many disparate parts, must make coordination a primary focus to avoid negative patient experiences — and reputational loss.

Care Coordination and Patient Satisfaction: What the Statistics Say

The importance of integrated patient care can be seen in statistics gathered since healthcare organizations began focusing more on interoperability:

• 63% of patients agree that providers listen to their concerns

• 62% stated that their care plans were personalized

• 72% of patients receiving care for chronic conditions said that this care had improved their quality of life

Despite the largely positive sentiment, there are still opportunities for improvement. At least 49% of patients struggle to interact with patient portals, and 53% found interactions with EHR systems frustrating.

A review of recent healthcare studies concluded that effective care coordination is essential for continuity of care; that is, ensuring that patients receive the right care at the right time until they’re discharged. Where care coordination is ineffective, it negatively impacts patient satisfaction, and the same report states that this leads to an increase in hospital admissions. Patients who end up in the hospital rather than experiencing improvements in care and the quality of life will not rate healthcare organizations highly. 

Challenges in Achieving Effective Care Coordination

One study from Quebec, Canada, worked with nurses involved in care coordination to understand which factors affected patient satisfaction and positive outcomes. Nurses concluded that care coordination challenges included:

• A growing complexity of patient needs, particularly as people are living for longer

• Maintaining a focus on patient-centered care

• Clarity of roles; medical professionals and support staff do not necessarily understand their duties

• Collaboration between medical professionals

• Shifting regulatory requirements

• Personnel shortages

Healthcare organizations also face challenges stemming from legacy systems that won’t easily interact with newer electronic health record (EHR) and electronic practice management (EPM) tools. Streamlining data management and transfer while protecting personal information are key catalysts for accelerating treatment journeys and improving patient satisfaction. 

Strategies for Enhancing Care Coordination

Implementing effective healthcare technology solutions that support interoperability and collaboration is a major step toward improved care coordination. Systems that gather the right data and instantly send it where it needs to go, whether to an insurer or a consultant, can be the driving factor behind improvements in patient experience. 

Healthcare leadership teams play a vital role by authorizing the implementation of effective systems and partnering with consultants who can help optimize workflows and improve efficiency. Patients expect digital experiences, from telehealth services to appointment booking systems. When they have to manually address multiple aspects of their care themselves, satisfaction ratings may drop.

Measuring the Impact on Patient Satisfaction

Truly integrated patient care should be about improving patient satisfaction metrics. To find out if this is the case, it's critical that you measure the correct key performance indicators (KPIs). 

Patient satisfaction KPIs every healthcare organization should monitor include:

• Appointment lengths in time

• Patient churn rate

• Contact rates by channel, e.g., how many are successfully booking appointments online, how many call by phone, etc.

• Patient feedback measurements

This last point is possibly the most challenging to measure, but the most critical. A patient survey that gathers experiential data offers immediate opportunities for improvement, including follow-ups when patients report a particularly negative experience. 

Financial Implications for Healthcare Organizations

It’s no surprise that improving patient satisfaction also impacts healthcare financial management. Preventing patient churn, for example, ensures consistent cash flow. Reducing appointment times through effective use of systems and workflow optimization allows clinicians to see more patients.

Importantly, when patient satisfaction scores are high, the healthcare organization's reputation improves. Recommendations and word of mouth can significantly impact patient numbers and create a positive cycle of increased profitability. 

How TempDev Helps Elevate Care Coordination for Enhanced Patient Satisfaction

It’s clear that financial success for healthcare organizations relies on positive patient outcomes, as well as patient perceptions and overall satisfaction. You can enhance patient satisfaction by improving how the integration of your EHR and EPM systems streamlines workflows, providing meaningful patient portals, and creating dashboards that enable administrators and healthcare leadership teams to quickly identify and address issues.

TempDev’s team of NextGen experts supports healthcare organizations by assessing existing systems and highlighting immediate opportunities for improvement. Take control of your healthcare system efficiency and enjoy elevated patient satisfaction metrics: Contact TempDev online or call us at 1.888.TEMPDEV.