The Waiting Room – A Patient’s First Impression

This post is sponsored by Samsung Business. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

We’ve all heard about the importance of first impressions. They last a long time and happen very quickly. The same is true for a medical practice. Patients’ first impression of a medical practice is the waiting room and that impression can last a very long time. What have you done to improve your patients’ experience in the waiting room?

Instead of doing a bunch of small things in your waiting room, I suggest you focus on creating one specific WOW! factor that patients will remember. In many cases people are turning to digital signage to provide this wow factor. Combine amazing content with some amazing digital signage like a curved TV, 3D TV, or massive screen and you can quickly implement the WOW! factor in your waiting room.

These type of memorable experiences for patients in your waiting room are the fuel that feeds social media and physician rating services today. If you want patients to share their experience at your office on social media or rate you highly on the various physician rating websites, start by WOWing them in your waiting room. Almost all of your patients now arrive with a phone in their pocket which they can use while they wait to provide your practice a quality rating. Leverage that as an asset.

I’ve heard some people argue that digital signage isn’t valuable anymore in the exam room because patients all show up with their own smartphones and tablets. They argue that patients have their heads buried in their phones and so they never see the digital signage you put in the exam room. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

The reality is that most of us with smartphones have become quite habituated to what people call the second screen experience. More and more people are watching TV while playing on their smartphone. It’s normal for us to be processing what’s on a TV while keeping an eye on our smartphone at the same time. The same thing happens in the waiting room when you provide a compelling digital experience. We consume both the TV and our smartphone.

Leveraging a high-quality digital experience in your waiting room provides a better patient experience overall. What’s the worst part of a waiting room? You have to wait. What’s the solution? We all have experienced a long flight or car ride that felt like it was much shorter thanks to some sort of digital media experience. This same experience can be had by patients if you invest in the right digital signage and content. Shorter wait times lead to better physician ratings in ambulatory practices and better HCAHPS scores in hospitals.

How have you approached your waiting room? Is there something unique or interesting you’ve done that’s made the patient experience better? What kind of first impression are you making on your patients?

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About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

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