66% of patients report that healthcare providers appear more rushed in their appointments than in the past.
(American Academy of Physician Associates)
In appointments, patients expect their providers to accommodate and listen to them fully. Unfortunately, providers may be preoccupied with keeping up with the demands of medical documentation. In the long run, this significantly impacts the patient experience, which can affect satisfaction, retention, and the bottom line.
To ensure you facilitate a positive patient experience, consider specific aspects of medical documentation that affect your patient’s engagement with your practice.
Here are four vital factors you should consider.
Four Factors About Documentation For The Patient Experience
1. Care Quality And Coordination
One of the most significant connections between patient experience and medical documentation is their combined impact on care quality and coordination.
Accurate PT documentation is crucial to providing treatments that precisely address the patients’ issues. On the other hand, poor documentation can lead to:
- Miscommunication between providers
- Lack of clarity on the patient’s treatment plan
- Risks in maltreatment
Thus, detailed clinical documentation is vital to improve clinical outcomes. Some practices have opted to use digital tools like AI scribes for medical documentation to elevate both progress note quality and the patient experience.
2. Patient-Provider Communication best: patient care.
Patient-provider communication has a 63% correlation with patient activation.
(Fedayi Yağar, PhD, “Why Does Patient-Physician Communication Matter?”)
Traditional note-taking during appointments can divide the provider’s attention between documentation and the patient. Additionally, providers usually take the time to ensure the accuracy of their medical documentation while avoiding mistakes such as overcoding.
In both cases, patient-provider communication can become strained as patients may receive fewer details about their condition and treatment. Incomplete information can leave patients wanting more from their experience — in fact, they may be less inclined to enact the steps of their treatment, resulting in limited results and lower satisfaction.
Striking a delicate balance between creating accurate medical documentation and providing complete details to patients is key to facilitating a full experience for your patients.
3. Patient Satisfaction And Retention
81% of patients find their healthcare experience unsatisfactory, according to Prophet’s “Current State of the Patient Experience” study. Several factors contribute to their satisfaction — the key player being the provider.
The way the provider engages with their patient has a substantial impact on the experience. However, when their medical documentation workflow intersects with patient engagement, the provider may spend less time directly interacting with the patient, which may make them feel unaccommodated and dissatisfied with the service.
Thus, you must implement a balanced physical therapy documentation workflow where providers can do note-taking effectively while engaging with the patient thoroughly.
4. Provider Motivation
According to a 2024 athenahealth article on patient documentation, 62% of providers indicate “excessive documentation requirements” as their cause of burnout.
Medical documentation may be a necessary component of practice operations. However, it’s secondary only to patient care and treatment, in which rehab therapists specialize.
Unfortunately, the constant demands of documentation veer providers from focusing on treating their patients. This affects the provider’s motivation as they’re more preoccupied with documentation processes than doing what they do best. Additionally, administrative burdens can wear out providers and cause them to be less effective in administering patient treatments. In both cases, the patient experience declines.
Taking care of your PT team’s well-being is vital to ensuring staff retention, enhanced performance, and improving the patient experience.
Consolidate Your Medical Documentation For A Holistic Patient Experience
Your medical documentation has a significant impact on your patient experience. To ensure successful practice operations with high revenue, you need to have a sustainable approach to your documentation that empowers your patient experience and upholds a high quality of care.
Provide a positive patient experience while ensuring your medical documentation is complete and accurate with ScribePT, the leading PT-focused AI scribe.
