Recently, someone I knew through work reached out to let me know she had used one of Gozio’s client’s mobile apps. She wanted to share a story about how the app had made it so easy to find the nearest urgent care. It turned out it was closer than the one she thought was nearest to her. She would not have known there was a more convenient option if she hadn’t used her health system’s app. She was thrilled that it provided not only the distance to urgent care options around her but also the wait and ability to save a spot.
Urgent features like these are very popular for health systems that want to provide a better experience for patients and help them access the right sites for care. Our partners at Solv are experts in this area, and published a benchmarking report on urgent care excellence and patient satisfaction.
It probably isn’t a surprise that on-demand care options are important to today’s consumer. According to the report, “patients consistently search ‘urgent care’ on average 5 times more than other health searches such as primary care or family medicine.” It is a key service, and it can be an important entry point to the larger system.
Urgent care is highly competitive and to be successful, it is critical to consider patient satisfaction and consumer preferences. Over the course of three months, Solv’s Experience software surveyed and collected patient feedback from 170,000+ patients. Anonymous and de-identified survey results were used to analyze the average patient satisfaction scores for each clinic group, and sort out top performers.
This is what Solv learned about the top performers in this analysis:
The report shows clearly that access to same day appointments, the ability to book a spot online, and a reasonable wait time were critical factors for patients. And when these things exist, there is a higher likelihood of a clinic receiving a 5-star review. It creates a feedback loop that generates more business since both the quality and quantity of reviews matters to patients when choosing an urgent care.
Beyond a simple Google search, providing locations, wait times, ratings, and the ability to book appointments through a mobile app can help provide the best experience for patients while also keeping them in your health systems.
Read the full report on patient satisfaction and urgent care excellence to learn more.