Patient-centered care brings patient engagement and personal involvement in care to a new level. When facilities try to implement patient-centered care, there is often a disconnect between what facilities think will make them more patient-centric and what patients really need. There’s a difference between making changes to become modern (like offering online scheduling) and implementing patient-centered initiatives, like involving patients more fully in their care.

What is Patient-Centered Care?

When facilities move toward more patient-centered care, it’s very similar to increasing their focus on patient engagement. Healthcare providers and patients should be on the same page in terms of the patient’s health goals, intentions and care plan. Patient-centered care should have a positive impact on health outcomes and can help patients be more knowledgeable about their conditions.

You already know that HCAHPS measures your patients’ interactions with doctors and nurses, their environment, overall experiences, understanding, and discharge proceedings. These topics and questions are great for gathering data, but it can be difficult to understand how to actually make changes to improve your scores. For instance, you can provide education and explain new treatments and changes to your patients, but it’s hard to know if that information is going to stay with them. How will they measure and rate their understanding? It’s hard to say.

What if, instead of focusing on the HCAHPS questions, you focused on five key elements of patient engagement? Prioritize satisfying and delighting your patients through their engagement and experience in your facilities. Focus on the patient and improved HCAHPS will follow. Let’s take a look at those five key elements.

You know that the patient experience is quickly becoming one of the most important aspects of the entire healthcare experience. Patients want quality care, and HCAHPS regulations have made the patient experience a key part of value-based care.

If you’re looking to increase your understanding of the patient experience, we’ve put together a list of five podcasts that focus on the patient experience. Tune into one of these podcasts on your commute or while you’re grabbing a post-work run and expand your knowledge and ability to give patients an excellent experience.

Patients can easily feel lonely during infusion therapy or a hospital stay. Healthcare organizations can help ease this by providing technology that not only makes patients feel more comfortable, but also connects them to their friends, family, and entertainment or distractions they prefer. Many facilities staff choose to install wall-mounted televisions that use a pillow speaker control, but those can feel impersonal.

Patients really appreciate the quality experience a personal bedside entertainment system can provide during their stay. It’s very important to think about all aspects of the patient experience together with the project needs before ordering and installing patient TVs. Our checklist here will inform you of the most important considerations you should consider early in this decision process.

THINK FIRST

Planning the cabling you will need to have installed, the incoming signal source, the type of mount that best fits your application, and how you will power the bedside devices will ensure you protect yourself from costly fixes in the future. This preparation work ensures that all equipment is compatible and that any peripheral devices needed are addressed and ordered at once. A professional installation by experienced technicians will alleviate your concerns and help transform your patient experience.

Space is a commodity in patient areas. When designing patient areas in healthcare facilities, thoughtful consideration must be made for medical equipment placement, providing ample room for staff and guests, and the placement of amenities such as the patient TV also must be well planned.

When evaluating entertainment solutions for your patient experience, you want to be sure the device and connected hardware are safe, proven, reliable, and are intuitive to patients. Here’s a holistic overview of elements you should inspect to ensure you select the best arm-mounted bedside entertainment system for your patients.  

Do you wish you could provide more entertainment and relaxation features through your patient TVs without the added cost or long set-up process that interactive patient systems require? 

It's no secret that anxiety plagues patients as they go through the uncertainty of healthcare treatments. Anxiety can also be exacerbated by medical circumstances such as drug use, phobias and mental disorders. Typical hospital environments don't make it easy for a patient to relax. The beeps of various medical machines, bustling hall noises, even the distinctive smells that waft through a clinical setting are enough to cause tension in a patient.

Healthcare-grade TVs offer patients added entertainment and relaxation options, no internet required. 

No internet, no problem! Driven by the mission of improving patient experience with entertainment technology since 1980, PDi Communication Systems, Inc., launched a unique line of large screen, healthcare-grade flat panel LED patient HDTV televisions that have integrated smart apps: The PDi A-Series. These TVs offer patients added entertainment and relaxation options for facilities not yet ready to turn on internet access. PDi is the nation’s largest manufacturer of complete healthcare-grade entertainment solutions from 14” arm-mounted tv or touchscreen systems thru 55” wall TVs. The A-Series by PDi is available in screen sizes 24”, 32”, 42” and 55”.

The A-Series changes the game in patient entertainment by using simple, thoughtful technology and design to provide more entertainment options to offer patients now, while providing a smart future-proof choice.