Your youngest patients likely don’t enjoy waiting in a pediatric waiting room, much less anywhere else. Ten minutes can feel like an eternity in an unfamiliar place, where they aren’t surrounded by their books, toys and other comforts.
This lack of familiarity can leave them on the verge of a potential meltdown. As for their parent or guardian? They’re on the edge of their waiting room seat, willing away that possibility.
Outfitting your pediatric waiting room with entertaining, home-like comforts that will engage them can keep their meltdowns at bay — and prevent them from spreading faster than the flu.
In waiting rooms, it’s not uncommon to see teary eyes and to hear unpleasant cries that come from worries about what is waiting for them during this visit, even if they love their doctors.
To help reduce their anxiety and acclimate young patients to your waiting room, you’ll want to create positive distractions.
Positive distractions are popular tools used by clinicians to reduce anxiety in patients of all ages. It involves helping patients manage stressors by introducing positive sensory experiences that are associated with positive emotions.
For adults, this might look like a serene water feature or calming music. For little ones, the approach might be totally different.
For example, even your youngest patients are likely to come to their doctor's visit with a screen of their own. QR codes make it possible to offer games that children can play on their own devices, with parent permission, of course.
Loading your pediatric waiting room with plushy animals or teether-inviting books may spread joy, but not serving as an epicenter for germ-spreading. With kids running around or laying about with runny noses and croupy coughs, it’s important to be mindful of the distractions offered in your waiting room.
if you’re going to offer toys, it’s best to use non-porous, easy-to-sanitize options.
An even better option is to think about how to leverage your TV and tablet screens to entertain and engage your diverse 0 to 17-year-old demographic.
Lean into communal entertainment by using a patient engagement system to keep them content while waiting (and at ease before they head into their appointment).
Since not all TV programs are suitable for all ages (or welcome by all parents), it’s best to offer edutainment options that can appeal to everyone, such as:
Those 15 minutes in your waiting room may be one of the few opportunities your patients’ parents have to sit, much less breathe. Take advantage of this opportunity to engage their parents, who are the decision-makers over their children’s health outcomes.
Keep it simple (yet informative) by using your waiting room screens or other digital displays to:
You can use your existing television screens to provide diverse and entertaining content that will appeal to all ages.
Kids have eclectic tastes, sometimes from one minute to the next. UPshow offers over 500 channels of entertainment for them to choose from while they wait. The more choices they have, the more likely they’ll land on a program that will help them feel just a little bit better.
For your teen patients or others who prefer entertainment that doesn’t require a lot of concentration, UPshow’s 50 commercial-free music stations may be just what the doctor ordered.
With UPshow’s Playlists, you can schedule hyper-targeted content that changes throughout the day, so that you can keep toddlers pacified with cartoons in the morning, and older children happy with “big kid shows” as they filter in after school.
While any given program plays, UPshow’s fixed panel and multipanel displays allow you to display important announcements or draw their attention to new wellness products, so incoming patients won’t miss them.
Your reception staff will be glad that managing the waiting room TV isn’t one more thing on their to-do list.
When kids aren’t feeling well, they want what brings them the most comfort — to be in their room with all their toys and watching their favorite TV shows. If they can’t be there, your pediatric waiting room can serve as an inviting home away from home.
UPshow’s patient engagement system has all your peds patients in mind, from youngest to oldest, and they’re parents, too! Our entertainment and learning engagement options can help them feel more at ease while waiting. We welcome you to try our risk-free demo today!
In its National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports, “Nearly 9 out of 10 adults have difficulty using the everyday health information that is routinely available in our health care facilities, retail outlets, media and communities.”
The fallout on patient engagement is evident. With low health literacy skills, patients are less likely to assume a proactive role in their healthcare, which can lead to unnecessary treatments and hospitalizations, resulting in health outcomes that are less than ideal.
Now, more than ever, clinical practices must reevaluate their patient engagement strategies in healthcare to empower patients and improve health literacy across the board.
A patient is the single most important stakeholder when it comes to their healthcare. The onus is on them to lead a healthy lifestyle, follow their treatment plans and commit to follow-up wellness visits and preventative care.
Healthcare providers are partners in that journey. This partnership starts with prioritizing patient engagement in clinical practices.
Making relevant medical information inaccessible to your patients isn’t just about a lack of transparency or withholding treatment options. Inaccessibility in patient care can also come from other barriers to access, like a lack of understanding. Accessibility prioritizes presenting medical information in an innovative way so patients can understand it and make informed decisions.
Further, accessibility is also the availability of a trusted medical professional to provide clarification and field questions a patient may have. Patient engagement suffers when patients don’t understand information or can’t seek answers to their questions.
Gone are the days of “doctor-knows-best” and other paternalistic healthcare models. Today, patients and their healthcare teams are collaborative partners from prevention and diagnosis to treatment and post-care wellness.
Healthcare providers can create an active partnership to improve patient outcomes and health literacy by:
Healthcare providers can also prioritize patient engagement and, at the same time, sharpen their patients’ health literacy skills by focusing on innovative ways to improve patient education through patient-care technology.
Effective patient education involves providing resources your patients can understand. Instead of offering them a pamphlet or packet chock-full of medical jargon they likely won’t comprehend, consider giving them access to an educational video or podcast.
Patient anxiety can serve as a barrier to achieving desirable health outcomes and improving patient health literacy. Healthcare providers interact (directly and indirectly) with their patients across several touchpoints, starting with their waiting rooms.
To reduce patient anxiety, health clinics and hospitals can leverage patient engagement strategies in unique ways across each of those touchpoints by:
Patients can’t engage in medical decisions if they don’t have the health literacy skills to understand their condition or what they need to do to achieve the health outcomes they want.
Healthcare providers can rope cutting-edge patient engagement strategies into their clinician-patient partnerships to outfit patients with the tools and resources they need to become the healthiest versions of themselves.
How easy is it for patients at your clinic to communicate with your practice or their healthcare team? How many of those methods are accessible and convenient for everyone?
Recent research proposes that using multiple communication channels (and the ability to integrate them via an omnichannel approach to patient-provider communication) “implies a flexibility for personalization,” which can boost patient engagement and the quality of care and health outcomes.
UPshow Health is the leading on-premise marketing cloud, enabling healthcare facilities to transform their screens into educational and engaging displays, affording them innovative communication channels to reach their patients in new and exciting ways:
Patients don’t need to be face-to-face with their healthcare team to learn more about their health and wellness or engage in their healthcare journey.
You can use UPshow Health on all of your screens — those in the waiting room, triage, treatment areas and short and long-term patient-care rooms to:
Empowering patients to engage in their health and wellness and improving their health literacy doesn’t need to be a complicated undertaking. You can use your existing TV screens and other digital displays to supply them with the educational information and resources they need to make informed decisions about their health.
UPshow’s digital signage solutions will equip your healthcare team and their patients with patient engagement strategies that will simplify provider-patient communication, reduce patient anxiety and aid in helping patients reach the best possible health outcomes. Sign up today for a risk-free demo and join ongoing efforts to help patient health literacy turn a corner in a positive direction.
With the rise in healthcare consumerism and a growing emphasis on creating a positive patient experience, healthcare providers are now more in-tune than ever with redefining and optimizing their patient engagement strategies.
Patient engagement platforms are lighting the path toward improved patient engagement and ideal healthcare outcomes.
But what makes one patient engagement platform stand out from the rest? The ideal patient engagement platform will offer four particular features your patients and their clinical team need to remain in sync along every step of a patient’s health and wellness journey.
A top-tier patient engagement platform is a digital software application that healthcare facilities use to disseminate patient-centric educational materials, encourage ongoing collaborative communication and streamline healthcare processes.
Often powered by user-friendly technology, a patient engagement platform can aid clinical practitioners in empowering their patients. Helping patients assume a proactive role in their healthcare decisions can drive positive health outcomes.
The benefits of a patient engagement platform are felt across the board by patients, healthcare professionals, staff and facilities and can include:
Not all patient engagement platforms offer the same tools or features. Some aren’t intuitive and much less user-friendly, while others seem to require advanced IT or graphic design skills to create a patient-pleasing display. So, how do you know which patient engagement platform is suitable for your patients, your healthcare team and your facility? Four pillar features must exist in the perfect patient engagement platform.
Patient health, wellness and safety are your top priority, not just content creation. Perhaps, the thought of creating engaging content alone has left you wondering how you can manage to rotate it into your already-busy schedule. And what might your learning curve be?
Easy content creation capabilities are an essential pillar to look for when choosing the right patient engagement platform. UPshow can ease any content-creation anxiety with its in-app Canva integration.
You can choose from easy-to-use templates or create your content from scratch with thousands of royalty-free stock photos, music, educational videos and more. This allows you to build customized content and marketing campaigns, spotlight upcoming events or partnerships, display important announcements and more.
Your patient’s appointment may be one of the only breaks they experience that day. Patient engagement doesn’t always have to involve a teachable moment. Sometimes entertainment or a stress-reducing nature channel can help them relax and recenter, enabling them to focus and engage once their appointment begins.
Zero in on a patient engagement platform that offers unique entertainment options that reflect your diverse patient population. An extensive selection of entertainment channels (500+), including hyperlocal and live stream content, will undoubtedly deliver the variety your patients will appreciate.
With patients constantly checking in and checking out, you’ll need a patient engagement platform that allows you to manage and schedule your content on a screen-by-screen and location-by-location basis.
Fixed panels and multipanel displays are necessary for your waiting rooms and other high-traffic patient areas. That’s because they allow you to display more than one type of content at a time.
For example, suppose your pediatric patients respond well to a comforting digital aquarium display on your screens. In that case, there’s no need to disrupt their focus with a patient announcement for their parent or guardian. A patient engagement platform that offers multi-panel displays will allow you to display both simultaneously.
You need access to accurate metrics and insights to determine which engagement efforts are effective and will yield a higher ROI.
Choose a patient engagement platform with extensive insights and analytics to track both on-screen and mobile real-time engagement and location-specific performance. These capabilities will allow you to optimize your content campaigns to achieve better patient engagement, increase conversions and achieve a positive ROI.
In addition to the four pillar features, UPshow’s patient engagement platform offers a diverse selection of engagement features and content tools that can drive higher engagement and make information more accessible.
What is the average time your patients spend in the waiting room? Ten minutes? Maybe 20? Nerves can run high in the waiting room, so offering diverse music options can help your patients feel more at ease. A significant part of the patient experience is making them feel welcome in a way that’s unique to their taste.
UPshow offers over 50 channels of premium audio that’s streamable, fully licensed and ad-free. Some patients prefer easy listening over a TV show or educational video. Choose a patient engagement platform that offers a wide range of diverse entertainment options, so they’re sure to find something that will make their waiting-room experience (and overall patient experience) that much better.
A significant variable in the patient engagement equation is accessibility. Engaging your patients on their personal devices is an effective way to broaden your clinic’s reach before, during and long after their appointment ends.
With UPshow’s QR Code campaign creator, you can give your patients access to targeted health and wellness literature, spotlight new holistic products and services or even invite them to complete a post-appointment survey.
No matter how cutting-edge your in-clinic technologies or procedures may be, clinical practices must invest in competitive patient engagement strategies for patients to achieve optimal wellness and ideal health outcomes.Equip your patients and practitioners with what they need to collaborate and communicate on their collective journey. Upgrade your patient engagement strategy with UPshow’s digital patient engagement platform. We welcome you to try a risk-free demo today. Discover a superior level of patient engagement and empowerment with UPshow.
Back Of House (BOH) training may seem like a challenge, especially in the hustle and bustle of a busy kitchen or stock room. But, by leveraging your BOH signage and TVs, employee learning and training can be a consistent practice.
The right strategies and content can help you create engaging training materials for your team to use and implement in daily practice. Here’s how you can use digital signage to support your BOH team members.
Every one of your employees will have a slightly different method of learning that works best for them. You can help your employees internalize your BOH training by providing it to them in a variety of ways.
UPshow makes it easy to present BOH training that caters to a range of learning styles.
Canva is fully integrated in the UPshow software, so it’s easy to create eye-catching content you can display on your BOH screens. You can incorporate infographics, images and written guides that can be shared in your kitchen. Scheduling tools make it easy to share information across your screens for each shift on a location-by-location basis. It keeps messaging and SOPs consistent across sites and shifts.
Not only this, but QR codes make it easy to put training and learning material in the palm of your employee’s hands. It makes it easy for them to review material and fill out forms at their convenience, without shift leaders or managers chasing them down.
Gone are the days of involved all-day training meetings and outdated videos. Today’s training methods should strive to engage employees without cutting into workflows.
Upgrading the delivery of training videos and images is an easy way to elevate tried-and-true methods, with the added bonus of making that training material consistently available on screens. You can cycle specific training material through your BOH screens as needed, ensuring that your employees don’t need to wait for the next formal staff meeting for clarification.
The gamification of training is becoming increasingly popular, turning employee learning into games and quizzes that make learning material easier to absorb and retain. Managers can even make friendly competitions out of these training strategies, rewarding employees who score highest on safety quizzes or creating a contest across shifts. This encourages training completion and rewards retention.
Ineffective training is useless. One of the most effective ways to find out how well your training is going is to gather feedback from your employees. They may be able to identify weaknesses in your training regimen that you may have missed.
UPshow Connect makes it easy to gather employee feedback with QR code campaigns. Connecting QR codes to online survey forms makes it easy for employees to use their own devices to fill out surveys that may go otherwise unnoticed.
It does need to be stressed that if you are going to solicit employee feedback, you also need to seriously consider and, if warranted, act upon that feedback.
Few things will damage an employee’s morale more than feeling that their opinion is being dismissed by their higher-ups, and doing so can cause difficulties in the workplace.
Creating a training schedule can be extraordinarily difficult, especially when you have to consider multiple shifts and schedules.
Powering your BOH screens with the right digital signage software, like UPshow, makes it easy to display training materials to all of your employees. You can schedule content across different shifts and at each of your locations, so everyone has access to the information they need.
You are also able to automatically schedule a rotation of information through the UPshow software, ensuring that all your employees are current on your business’s policies.
This makes it easy to streamline your management’s communication efforts and keep procedures consistent across staff. It’s an easy way to address and solve the problem of miscommunication or scheduling conflicts.
Training can become especially effective when you make a point of recognizing employees who are consistent leaders on your team.
Creating displays that celebrate ambition or congratulate success is an easy way to show your team members that you are invested in their performance. You can even use premade templates to celebrate milestones like birthdays and work anniversaries. A personalized message to recognize employees can go a long way in showing appreciation to your dedicated staff.
Performance metrics can be used to identify areas of potential improvement and can also serve as accountability tools. Encouraging your employees to complete training and meet performance goals is easy with UPshow!
With POS and/or LMS integration, UPshow can display performance and sales metrics. These in turn can be used to determine the efficacy of any training employees have undergone.
The best strategies for BOH training take all of your employees’ needs into consideration. Your employees will each favor a different approach to learning, so the more of those approaches you can offer, the more effective your training will be.
The right training tool and delivery method should help you see a return on your investment, keep employees engaged and should be easy to maintain. A comprehensive digital signage software like UPshow SHIFT makes it easy to keep your staff informed without the need for involved meetings.
Curious about which of your shared content is most effective? Use UPshow’s insight and analytics tools to help you determine which elements of your training displays are most engaged with.
It makes it easy to identify which content goes unnoticed, so you can strategies the right delivery methods for your team. Insights and analytics report on a micro and macro level, so you can determine what screen usage looks like for each of your shifts and across each of your locations.
With so many tools at your disposal, UPshow makes it as easy as turning on a screen to get your BOH employees on the same page. Schedule your free demo of UPshow today to see how we can help you take your training to the next level!
Creating a positive customer experience takes more than meeting consumer needs or demands. Businesses must exceed those expectations to retain customer loyalty and drive revenue growth. And the healthcare industry is no exception.
With soaring healthcare costs combined with an online retail marketplace for health insurance, today’s patients want a healthcare customer experience that is convenient and tailored to their needs.
In its literature review, the International Hospital Federation reported on research findings by Forrester Consulting, which show that over 25% of patients changed providers because of a negative digital health experience. Since 2019, that number has scaled by 40%.
Patient-centric technologies are improving the customer experience in healthcare in unprecedented ways. Healthcare providers are being pushed to embrace the digital healthcare transformation or risk their patients leaving them behind.
Patient healthcare experience includes all patient interactions across multiple touchstones in the healthcare system. These interactions include:
Across the healthcare continuum, providers are investing in blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), and other virtual healthcare technologies to create a meaningful, convenient and personalized healthcare experience that can drive better patient outcomes, as well as increasing patient accessibility through tech-based solutions like in-office screens.
Patients experience varying levels of anxiety at different points of their healthcare experience. For some, anxiety may run high before an outpatient surgery while others may feel tense or on edge in the waiting room or triage.
Healthcare facilities can reduce patient anxiety by creating an immersive experience with innovative technologies. Research shows that clinical facilities that use immersive virtual reality (VR) technologies witness a reduction in both anxiety and pain in children and adults.
While VR may not be practical or affordable for many clinical practices, health providers can create an immersive experience in simpler yet effective ways. For instance, studies show that when music plays in clinical waiting rooms and preoperative areas, it has an anxiety-reducing effect on patients.
Patients need access to the right resources to make informed decisions about their health and wellness. Healthcare professionals can use digital tools to increase patient engagement, leading to positive health outcomes.
Health facilities are outfitting their communal and treatment-room TV screens with relevant educational resources and patient-centric materials. These digital tools empower patients to learn more about their medical conditions and treatment options in accessible ways.
Practitioners can also use digital tools to promote better transparency and build trust with their patients — two pillars necessary to improve patient engagement. One finding reports that practitioners who used digital screens to display electronic health records (EHR) to their patients experienced higher levels of patient engagement.
No two patients are alike. Likewise, no two patient experiences are alike either. The more feedback healthcare clinics can garner from their patient population, the closer they’ll be to delivering the kind of healthcare experience patients want. As for the clinical team, data collected from these patient feedback platforms can drive patient-centric healthcare and facility improvements.
One of the simplest ways your clinic can solicit patient feedback is to invite them (or even incentivize them) to provide feedback about their pre-visit expectations and post-visit experience.
You can plant screen displays and other digital signage at key patient access points (e.g., the check-in and check-out areas, etc.) so they are more likely to access them, taking your patients’ convenience and health into consideration.
Creating an immersive patient experience to reduce anxiety levels and drive patient engagement doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, you can use existing digital screens and technologies in your clinical practice to do it.
UPshow Health is an on-premise marketing cloud-based software designed to transform your clinic’s digital screens into conduits for the type of patient experience your patients have been looking for.
With UPshow Health, you can create an immersive patient experience by:
The cornerstone of effective patient-provider communication is accessibility. QR-code technology is a cutting-edge way to empower patients by putting a communication channel in the palm of their hands.
Displaying QR-code technology on your screens invites patients to engage with your clinic from their own devices.
You can use QR-code technology to invite patients to:
The beauty of ever-evolving technology is that you can offer your patients more than one feature or resource at a time. For instance, UPshow Health allows you to educate and entertain your patients simultaneously with its fixed and multi-display capabilities.
You can also use content scheduling capabilities to set the duration of your educational and entertainment options. It also allows you to control the content of your screens across multiple locations or even on a screen-by-screen basis. These capabilities will also equip your health facility with the necessary insights and analytics to give unique patient populations the best possible healthcare customer experience.
Patients want the best of both worlds — modern, innovative and accessible healthcare along with a personalized and empathetic experience.UPshow Health can engage your patients in all areas of your practice and help you give them the healthcare customer experience they deserve. Sign up today for a free demo of UPshow Health and see how digital signage is transforming the patient healthcare experience one health facility at a time.
The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) reports that in 2022, the average annual health insurance premium for single coverage in the United States was $7,911 and $22,221 for families. Combining this with Statista’s research showing total out-of-pocket healthcare payments on the rise, it’s no wonder patients are becoming more vocal about what they do and don’t want on their healthcare journey.
Standards for better patient engagement in healthcare are evolving. The bar is high for all stakeholders, too. Patients want to feel seen, heard and respected by their healthcare providers. And if they aren’t engaged and satisfied? They’ll find another provider who will meet their needs.
One of the best ways healthcare clinics and hospitals can give patients what they want is to earn how to improve patient engagement in healthcare. This could involve onboarding creative healthcare solutions ranging from stricter adherence to patient treatment plans to using QR codes.
Patients are now looking for a more personalized customer experience from their healthcare providers than ever before. So, what is patient engagement in healthcare? It is the involvement and commitment of a patient in their own treatment plan as well as recovery prospects. They’re willing to pack up and move on to the next care provider to get the level of patient engagement and satisfaction they’re looking for.
The World Health Organization defines patient engagement as “the process of building the capacity of patients, families, carers, as well as healthcare providers to facilitate and support the active involvement of patients in their care, in order to enhance safety, quality and people-centeredness of healthcare service delivery.”
Patient engagement directly affects patient satisfaction. But its impact is broad sweeping and doesn’t stop there.
The importance of patient engagement in healthcare lies in the fact that patients that are more engaged in their own health tend to heal faster.
In fact, the global non-profit group, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), tells us the more patients are engaged in their healthcare decisions, the more likely they are to experience greater health outcomes.
In general, for most patients, positive health outcomes can include any one or combination of the following:
Patients aren’t the only ones who stand to benefit from improved health outcomes either — especially when those health outcomes are reported and made accessible to the greater healthcare community.
Some of these benefits include:
The cornerstone of effective patient engagement revolves around shared decision-making efforts between the patient, their family and their clinical team. When patients are engaged and empowered, they’re more likely to follow the agreed-upon treatment plan, including taking medications, continuing with therapy or rehabilitation routines and more.
Activated and engaged patients are proactive patients. Further, they’re more likely to advocate for their needs and seek reevaluation and guidance when something isn’t working in their treatment.
The benefits don’t stop there. When patients are engaged and adhere to their treatment plans, it can:
Empathy is necessary to achieve and sustain shared decision-making between a patient and their provider. Patients want the opportunity to speak on behalf of their needs. Likewise, they need health professionals who provide accessible patient communication channels and extend an empathetic ear when they self-advocate.
Patient engagement won’t improve unless your patients have access to the right tools and resources to help them along their journey.
UPshow Health is the leading on-premise digital patient engagement platform that can power your health facility’s screens with the resources and communication channels you need to empower — and better engage — your patients.
To make the most of the short amount of time you have with your patients, you’ll need to make every minute they’re with you count and do it in a dynamic way.
With the aid of UPshow’s Canva integration and pre-made design templates, you can create content such as:
One of the pillars of strong patient engagement is accessible and fluid communication between patients and their healthcare team. UPshow Health’s reach transcends the boundaries of your screens, allowing you to engage patients on their phones and personal devices.
With the help of the QR Code campaign creator, your healthcare facility can give your patients easy access to:
If patients aren’t engaged or satisfied on their healthcare journey, it can inhibit them from reaching their desired health outcomes. That’s a lose-lose for them, your facility and the healthcare industry as a whole which is why it is so important for administrative authorities to learn how to improve the patient experience at their healthcare facilities.
Empower your patients with UPshow Health and outfit them with the tools and resources they need to rise as the primary decision-makers on their health and wellness journey.Try a risk-free demo today, and discover the benefits higher patient engagement and retention can bring for your patients, clinic and the healthcare industry.
A patient’s experience in the waiting room can set the tone for how satisfied they are with their clinical experience. In fact, a research study published in the American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC) shows a strong negative correlation between long wait times and a patient’s “confidence in the care provider and perceived quality of care.”
While issues like long wait times may prove unavoidable, there are ways to make the wait more tolerable. It all starts with revamping your clinic’s waiting room.
By and large, patients may feel anxious while waiting for their appointments to begin. Suppose your waiting room is cramped and doesn’t have a designated child or family area or technology to provide access to the patient information they need. This can exacerbate anxiety and negatively impact their patient experience.
Tailoring your clinic’s waiting room design to meet your patients’ needs can produce positive outcomes for them and your team.
The aesthetic, layout, energy and opportunities for patient engagement are just some factors that can impact a patient’s waiting room experience. When it comes to your waiting room design, you’ll want to offer comfort that translates to a welcoming space for them.
Keep these ideas in mind to reduce their pre-appointment anxiety:
Creating a welcoming clinical waiting room design involves more than choosing the right wall colors or seat cushions. It also means investing in the best ways to boost patient engagement.
To do this, you’ll need to consider all of the ways your patients and their families currently interact or could engage with your waiting room:
Which values does your practice stand by? No doubt, you’re family-oriented. Of course, your practice exudes an unwavering commitment to patient privacy, too.
You can communicate the values of your practice through your clinic waiting room design. Start with your primary patient demographic. Are they children and adolescents? Or, adults who must bring their children to their appointments?
If so, you can show your patients your investment in them and their families by:
Research studies show that, on average, patients spend 41 minutes waiting from the time they register to the time they see a clinician. While that is a long time, it’s also an opportunity to engage your patients and enhance their patient experience before they get called to the back.
Making various entertainment options available in your waiting room can help patients develop a positive mindset before their appointment. Rather than playing a local talk show or a stress-inducing news channel, you’ll want to offer a wide range of entertainment options to mirror your diverse patient population.
UPshow Health is an on-premise marketing cloud that can transform your waiting room's TVs and digital screens into an engaging educational and entertainment hub. From curated healthcare channel packs to over 500 entertainment channels, with live stream and hyperlocal options, your patients can select what they want to watch and when they want to watch it.
Not all patients will have the mental bandwidth to focus on a TV show, much less find it relaxing. Give your patients access to alternative, relaxation-inducing options:
Natural lighting and entertainment options aside, your clinic waiting room design should prioritize patient engagement and awareness. Start by leveraging your waiting room screens to give patients access to health and wellness information, important updates and announcements about your practice and so much more.
These are just some of the ways UPshow Health can help you use your waiting room screens to fortify patient engagement:
You don’t need to be an expert in graphic design to create eye-catching, informative displays for your waiting room. UPshow’s in-app Canva integration gives you access to design templates and royalty-free stock photos, videos, and music to create customized and engaging displays.
With patients constantly coming in and going out, you’ll want to use fixed and multipanel displays to keep critical announcements on the screen while simultaneously engaging those patients who continue to wait.
With the help of accessible insights and analytics, you’ll be privy to what your patients are engaging with the most. These insights will allow you to optimize your screens to continue creating the targeted and engaging content they want.
A welcoming and engaging waiting room can turn an otherwise anxious experience into a pleasant one for your patients. And the best waiting room design for your clinic is anything but skin-deep.UPshow Health can transform your waiting room into a welcoming, anxiety-reducing space that engages your patients and their families. Sign-up for your custom demo and discover how UPshow can help you transform your waiting space.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reports a staggering uptick in stress and burnout among healthcare employees, culminating in a projected net shortage of over three million essential healthcare workers within the next five years.
Employee burnout, low engagement and staff shortages don’t just affect healthcare employees either. Instead, they significantly impact patient safety and outcomes, along with the operational effectiveness of the healthcare facility.
Now, more than ever, industry leaders are searching for ways to reduce burnout by improving employee engagement in healthcare. Some strategies are easier to implement and more effective than others in raising employee engagement levels.
Even before COVID struck, healthcare employee engagement levels were tanking, especially for frontline workers. Fast forward to our post-pandemic world, and now healthcare employees are shouldering even more.
From heavier workloads, limited resources and longer hours to rising compassion fatigue and stress, investing in the best employee engagement strategies in healthcare is the healing balm healthcare workers — and their patients — need.
With ongoing employee shortages in healthcare comes increased workloads and added strain on the providers who remain at the helm of patient care. These shortages fuel the need for these care providers to assume new and varied roles to compensate for this deficit.
To quell this shortage, boost employee engagement, reduce care-provider errors and improve retention, healthcare leaders must prioritize providing greater access to continued education (CE) training and other resources, along with effective centralized communication channels.
Without access to these resources, front-line care providers won’t have the knowledge they need to provide the best patient care possible. This can lead to added stress and lower engagement levels and, at the same time, compromises patient safety and derails positive health outcomes.
Healthcare professionals are master multi-taskers. But with rising staff shortages, effective multitasking has reached a tipping point. Now, the remaining staff is juggling their job duties and those left behind by colleagues who have resigned.
Medscape reports that the leading cause of burnout among medical professionals is the increased number of administrative tasks they’ve assumed. Shouldering heavy administrative workloads has caused more stress and burnout, leaving a wake of negative consequences that impact their ability to provide quality patient care.
Healthcare leaders and administration must offer innovative technologies in their healthcare setting to consolidate and streamline these tasks to alleviate the ever-growing burden on their clinical care team.
Healthcare providers are in one of the most high-stakes professions in the world. Care providers are coping with overbearing stress, isolation and burnout at record levels.
According to the New England Journal of Medicine, on May 23, 2022, Dr. Vivek Murthy sounded the alarm on rising burnout in healthcare by issuing a Surgeon’s General Advisory on “health worker burnout and wellbeing.” Dr. Murthy deemed it a “crisis” and declared it a national priority with clear directives to reduce its growth and impact on healthcare professionals and their patients.
One of Dr. Murthy’s directives centered on building a healthcare culture that supports well-being, inclusion and respect. Creating a positive work atmosphere will require all hands on deck, from government leaders to health admin, physicians, nurses, and feedback from care providers across the spectrum.
Healthcare leaders can foster this collaboration by encouraging regular feedback via accessible communication channels in their healthcare facilities, often in the form of feedback forms and surveys.
Improving employee engagement in healthcare doesn’t have to be complicated. Start by using your existing resources —such as your facility’s screens — to make real and lasting changes for your healthcare employees. UPshow SHIFT for healthcare will streamline this process for you.
One of the most effective ways to reduce your employees' stress levels (and improve their engagement) is to give them access to the resources and knowledge they need when they need it to provide quality patient care.
UPshow SHIFT is a digital employee engagement platform that can run on your facility’s screens as an on-premise signage cloud. Since most healthcare employees are deskless workers, ensuring everyone has access to the resources and communication channels necessary to perform at their best can be challenging.
With UPshow SHIFT, you can offer access to these resources and engage your healthcare providers in the following ways:
Many of your employees are on the move, treating one patient to the next. Equipping them with easy-to-access communication channels and the resources they need will keep your staff in the know and reduce clinical errors.
With UPshow SHIFT, your facility will find it easy to:
Healthcare professionals can’t provide patients with outstanding quality care when they’re battling their own stress and burnout. As Dr. Murthy advises, addressing burnout is a national priority, and healthcare facilities are on the frontlines of making significant changes to bring it under control. UPshow SHIFT can streamline training, promote employee recognition and improve internal communications to boost employee engagement in your healthcare facility. Try a risk-free demo today, and put your team on the frontlines of making lasting change across the healthcare industry.
Since the height of the pandemic, change has rocked the US healthcare system and its stakeholders. From nursing shortages to dwindling medical supplies, spikes in hospital bankruptcies and clinic closures — along with the demand for retail healthcare — the traditional in-clinic healthcare model is undergoing a significant facelift.
Today’s patients want medical services and advice when needed — not three weeks down the road at the first available appointment. Recent research on retail healthcare trends shows a growing number of retail health clinics are stepping up to meet patients’ demand for convenient visits, affordable care and more, especially in rural and vulnerable patient populations.
But as the demand for retail healthcare continues to rise, patients expect more convenience and accessibility.
And they’re willing to shop near and far to find it.
To create a more seamless patient experience, retail health clinics must leverage innovative technologies, such as digital patient engagement platforms, to equip patient-consumers with what they need to make informed decisions about their health and wellness for the long haul.
When the COVID pandemic hit and lockdowns were in full force, hospital visits and ER intakes were restricted, except for critical cases. Although retail healthcare clinics have existed since the beginning of 2000, they scaled significantly during the height of the pandemic, especially in rural patient populations.
And they’re still going strong. Researchers anticipate the US retail healthcare market will reach a $4.22 billion valuation by 2029.
Patients use retail healthcare clinics, telehealth and mobile clinics to treat acute conditions and tend to preventative care needs. The convenience of walk-in availability or an appointment within 24 hours, combined with transparent fee structures and low costs is only fueling the demand for additional retail healthcare options.
Traditional brick-and-mortar medical facilities and retail health clinics alike must revisit their patient engagement strategies to improve the overall patient-consumer experience in this evolving climate. Embracing innovative technologies can make patient healthcare more accessible and convenient and bring a positive patient experience within reach.
QR code technology can put important medical information in patients’ hands anywhere they go. According to a recent article from the British Medical Journal (BMJ), convenient access to personal medical records is a cornerstone in empowering patients to take a proactive role in their healthcare.
You can use QR technology to create a seamless retail healthcare experience by:
The patient-consumer experience begins the second a patient steps on your premises and can continue long after they leave. Take advantage of their time with your facility to make their experience as positive and convenient as possible right from the get-go.
Recruit your clinic’s existing TV screens and monitors as partners in their patient experience. The best patient engagement platform can give patients the personalized touch they want.
For instance, make check-in easy. You can free up your staff from check-in obligations (and long lines) by deploying QR-code technology to encourage digital sign-in upon arrival. Also, your patients are likely busy and need to return to X number of tasks, so use your screens to display your current wait times. This way, they’ll know where they stand in real time.
Creating a seamless retail healthcare experience involves trial and error. To know what’s working and what isn’t, solicit patient-customer feedback. They’ll tell you what they want (and don’t want).
You could place a QR code on a digital screen at the check-out desk or on a fixed panel just before the exit to encourage their input. Incentives are always welcome, too. Take a quid-pro-quo approach by offering an exclusive discount on their next visit or a free service in exchange for their feedback. Not only will you garner invaluable feedback, but you’ll also fortify patient-consumer loyalty in the process. Repeat visits and, by default, increased patient engagement can help create improved health outcomes.
When a patient is in the driver’s seat on the road to better health and wellness — as The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports — they’re more likely to experience positive health outcomes.
Partnering with the right digital patient engagement solution can engage and empower patients by offering convenient accessibility, patient-education opportunities, collaborative communication channels and so much more. To better retain patients this way, retail healthcare providers must establish and continuously build trust to maintain those care relationships.
While most patients now demonstrate they trust using retail healthcare facilities (compared to “traditional” medical providers), research shows this hasn’t always been the case.
Retail healthcare facilities can leverage a digital patient engagement solution to build trust organically via education, transparency and more. When patients have access to the personalized educational materials and resources they need, they’re more likely to gain clarity about their health, so they can ultimately engage with and assume an active role in their healthcare journey.
Retail healthcare facilities can build trust and boost patient retention by:
Patients want access to the latest and most effective service and treatment options available. And the closer, the better. Is your clinic offering a new Ayurvedic procedure? Perhaps a holistic fertility treatment? An experience-now-pay-later payment plan option? Or are you hoping to launch a new private parenting support group? You’ll want to promote those services and plans with visible and accessible digital signage.
UPshow allows you to better engage patients by spotlighting new and existing service and treatment options or community partnerships your patients will want to know about. Their engagement will drive revenue growth for your retail healthcare facility, affording you additional resources to maximize their engagement over time.
Retail healthcare trends show that patient-consumers want convenient access to affordable healthcare outlets. After all, they are the lead decision-maker in their health and wellness journey. But what is a leader without a collaborative support system behind them?UPshow’s digital patient engagement platform can create a seamless retail healthcare experience that patients will trust every step of the way. Sign-up for our risk-free demo and discover how UPshow’s innovative patient engagement solution is on the frontline of transforming the retail healthcare space the way patients want.
Positive patient engagement in healthcare depends on a patient’s ability to communicate with their medical provider openly and have access to resources that allow them to take ownership of their health. Broadly speaking, the importance of patient engagement in healthcare lies in the fact that patients make more informed decisions when given access to resources and other enabling information.
According to HealthMine, almost 75% of all patients claim electronic access to their medical history, records and more would improve communication with their healthcare team and ultimately give them a clearer understanding of their healthcare needs.
When patients are adequately engaged and achieve positive health outcomes, it can translate to a better patient experience, fewer readmissions and lower medical costs across the board. Healthcare facilities are now more invested than ever in discovering innovative ways to engage their patients and aid them in achieving the best possible outcomes. However, to really understand the intricacies of the importance of patient engagement in healthcare, it is better to start by understanding what is patient engagement in healthcare in the first place.
Patient engagement in healthcare means patients have and use medical resources to make informed decisions about their health and wellness. It involves a shared-decision making process between the patient (and their family network) and the clinical team that is tethered to patient-centered education and an open communication model.
High patient engagement has a positive impact on healthcare outcomes as per the CDC.
Engaged patients have better outcomes because they’re better informed about their treatment plans and are more likely to be in communication with their clinical team. This means they’re more likely to comply with prescribed treatments and therapies, which can lead to better treatment results.
Patient engagement can also encourage positive patient outcomes by:
Now that we understand why patient engagement is important, let’s try to consider what is involved in its implementation. A primary care provider and their medical team only have so many hours of direct or indirect contact with each patient every year.
Outside of wellness appointments and checkups or patient-portal chat sessions, it is a patient’s responsibility to assume a can-do mindset and commit to treatment plans and lifestyle goals on their own time.
From a practitioner's perspective, providing patients with the tools and resources they need to remain engaged to achieve their ideal health outcomes is critical. At the same time, practitioners and healthcare leaders must endeavor to understand the unique needs of their patient demographic. Some of the most effective ways to do this include:
As technology evolves, clinical practitioners must find the most convenient and user-friendly ways to engage their patients and drive positive patient outcomes. UPshow’s Patient engagement software is an innovative digital engagement solution that fits that bill.
One of the best ways to remove barriers to patient engagement is by creating accessible and engaging content. With UPshow’s patient engagement software, you can use your existing televisions and screen displays to showcase your customized content and boost patient engagement.
You can create a content playlist of images, educational videos and other content that you can control from anywhere. With UPshow, it’s easy to make content that breaks down complex medical concepts or treatments to make it relatable, provide health and wellness tips and more.
If you’re worried you don’t have the technical know-how to accomplish this, don’t worry! UPshow offers preexisting, ready-to-use templates through in-platform Canva integration that you can use to create just the right content for your patients. The in-house managed services team can also help with content strategy, targeted creative design and more. Our team is here to offer support every step of the way.
Suppose you would like to inform patients about a new service, patient-portal feature or a feedback survey. In that case, you can use QR-code integration capabilities that give patients access to content right from their phones and other devices.
For patients to open up to their healthcare providers — much less engage — they need to feel safe. After all, trust begins with safety and security.
Creating a calming healthcare environment with entertainment features can help patients feel more at ease and less anxious. This offers patients an opportunity to focus on their wellness.
You can accomplish this by highlighting targeted entertainment features in your content rotation.
For instance, patients who experience anxiety might appreciate a waiting room filled with serene sounds and scenes of nature. You can do this by coupling images of nature with one of UPshow’s lyric and ad-free music stations to recenter.
You could also take advantage of UPshow’s fixed panel and multipanel displays to highlight mindfulness best practices and healthy living recommendations simultaneously.
Forego cable Television and, instead, opt for UPshow’s 500 entertainment channels. These include live-streamed and hyper-local options. With several channels at their fingertips, patients are sure to find something to help them focus and settle in.
Driving patient engagement and positive health outcomes is a team effort that relies on fluid communication between clinicians and patients, patient access to educational materials and more.UPshow’s patient engagement software is a partner that healthcare leaders trust. We welcome you to try our risk-free demo so you can discover how UPshow’s patient engagement software can help your clinic, and patients, succeed.
Finding ways to drive sales is no easy task. It requires more than clever marketing and promotions. To keep numbers up and see consistent results, it’ll need to be a team effort.
But how?
Imagine displaying digital daily sales leaderboards to foster friendly competition among your staff. Or would you like to start showcasing your top performers in an employee spotlight each month? Integrating an on-premise digital engagement platform with your point-of-sale (POS) system can help.
Keep reading to discover how UPshow SHIFT leverages integration with POS systems to help you train, inform and motivate your team–increasing your employee engagement, and maybe even sales.
A point-of-sale system (POS) is the nerve center of your business. It’s a digitalized system used in hospitality and retail environments to record, process and track sales transactions. It can also track your inventory, compute taxes and generate sales reports.
Back in the day, a POS system included a cash register and a receipt book. Today, POS systems are fully computerized, consisting of both hardware and software and can include the following:
Depending on how sophisticated your POS system is, you can also track loyalty programs, customer data and purchase habits and your marketing campaigns. To do that, though, you need POS system integration with a software service that can create a more compelling customer experience, front-of-house, too. More about that later!
Before you integrate digital signage with your POS system, you’ll want to determine goals for what you hope to accomplish front of house, back of house or both.
To help you set realistic goals that can be aligned with your employee engagement strategy, you’ll want to use your POS system to track your key performance indicators (KPI).
You can likely use your POS system to track and gain more precise insights about some of the following KPIs:
Your POS system can tell you what you’re selling the most or least during different shifts. You can also track your average sales and the number of transactions per customer.
If your customer retention rate has declined, you can use digital signage to bring it back around again by offering BOGO deals or a free item with their next purchase.
Your customers know what they want. And your POS system has kept tabs on their preferences and buying patterns.
Let’s say you’re about to unveil a new burger special. Reports from your POS system can show you that, on average, your customers purchase more burgers at lunchtime. You can create a targeted advertisement with UPshow and display the new burger during lunch and other peak times on your front-of-house screens.
Let’s face it—sometimes customers can be brutally honest. Luckily, you can turn lemons into lemonade with UPshow.
UPshow makes it possible to create, share, and deploy surveys and other engaging content that you can use to tailor your content and marketing strategy. Coupled with metrics from your POS system, these insights will make it possible to create highly targeted content that is sure to command attention.
Research shows that employees who are better engaged and feel included tend to perform better. Have you run an employee performance report lately and noticed that a few of your top performers are underperforming?
You can use UPshow SHIFT to create inspiring BOH messages or display performance goals so your employees keep their eye on the prize. Here’s how UPshow Shift can integrate with POS systems.
UPshow SHIFT is an on-premise performance marketing cloud that leverages integration with your POS systems to maximize the potential of the existing digital screens in your business.
Setting up is easy. The first step is to ensure your digital screens are visible and placed in high-traffic areas to increase customer engagement (but not congestion during rush-hour shifts).
Next, simply download the UPshow software directly onto the screen if it is Bluetooth and wireless enabled. Otherwise, you may need a hardwire connection.
Depending on your POS system (e.g., Xenial, NCR Aloha, etc.), you’ll next integrate it with the UPshow SHIFT software. UPshow’s customer service team is always available around the clock to troubleshoot or help make your integration as smooth as possible.
You want to create digital content that can unlock all the benefits of POS system integration by engaging and motivating your employees to perform at their prime. But what if creating content isn’t your strong suit (or priority)? No problem!
With UPshow SHIFT’s Canva integrations, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Their ready-made templates are easy to use, so you can customize them with your branding and unique content to engage and motivate your employees.
Under pressure from corporate to have your employees complete their annual mandatory training in safety and compliance? UPshow’s QR code integration makes it easy to create interactive signage.
Your employees can scan the QR code on an integrated POS system to access their training portal and other important information. And you can track who’s completed it, how long it took them, their training results and more—allowing you to analyze the metrics and make adjustments before next year’s training.
The more data you have about your employee and customer engagement, the better you’ll be at making informed decisions that improve employee satisfaction and drive revenue and other business outcomes.
Here are some of the digital signage analytics you’ll have at your fingertips with UPshow SHIFT:
Combining UPshow SHIFT’s on-screen data analytics with your POS data and reports can help you know what’s working or if you should pivot and optimize your on-screen content—saving you time, money and other resources.
A little friendly competition never hurt anyone!
You can drive sales and encourage team members to promote limited-time offers with POS integration. This makes it possible to track and share sales across shifts and individual team members so that you can create live leaderboards for your digital signage.
It’s the perfect way to add flair to your employee engagement strategy and to create camaraderie amongst team members.
For those customers waiting for you to roll out those vegan options, digital signage will allow you to advertise and recommend your new additions.
Ready to launch your location’s 50%-off Friday campaign? You can share this type of promotion on your front-of-house screens, keeping your customers in the know.
Integrating your POS system with UPshow SHIFT can make the difference between meeting performance goals and exceeding expectations.
Ready to keep your employees and customers engaged and informed? UPshow’s team is prepared to help. Sign up for a free demo today!
From your waiting room to triage down to your treatment and procedure rooms, keeping patients informed about their conditions and treatment options wherever they are is essential. In fact, it can make the difference between achieving positive results and the best possible health outcomes.
Outfitting your treatment rooms with the right patient engagement solution will encourage patients to interact with their surroundings —enabling them to take the reins on the path toward better health and wellness.
It may seem like it takes a village to improve patient engagement but if you have the right patient engagement solutions you efforts will yield results faster and with more accuracy.
At its core, patient engagement must include ongoing collaboration, trust and shared decision-making between patients and their medical care team.
Every patient needs easy access to personalized healthcare education, tools and other resources in order to understand how to best protect their health. When they do, they’re more likely to experience higher levels of patient engagement and better health outcomes.
Yet, according to a recent survey by the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst Insights Council, healthcare professionals believe that only 34% of their patients are highly engaged.
Such findings are leading to a growing interest in finding ways to increase patient engagement with innovative solutions. However, the key question is how do patient engagement solutions actually boost treatment outcomes?
Patients might spend anywhere from a few minutes to several hours in your treatment rooms. Engaging them starts by giving them access to the information they need to make educated decisions about their health conditions and treatment options.
Equipping your treatment rooms with digital patient engagement solutions can bring patients face-to-face with learning materials and educational opportunities.
The best digital patient engagement solutions provide your medical facility with the ease and flexibility to:
Sharing healthcare literature and action-driving information in a convenient and entertaining way that appeals to your patients is half the battle toward improving patient engagement.
You can use UPshow’s digital signage solutions to disseminate healthcare information in multiple formats that will engage every patient.
Here are some of the best ways to share general and customized patient-centric information in your treatment areas:
Think of UPshow’s patient-first digital engagement platform as a co-mentor in your clinic — there to inform, educate, engage and empower your patients in the treatment area and beyond. Here’s how to leverage our patient engagement solutions to maximize patient engagement in your treatment rooms.
No need to trade in your scrub cap for a tech-wizard hat. You can create and share diverse and customized content on your treatment room screens with UPshow’s easy-to-use content-creation tools and features. Here’s how:
What you display on the screens in your treatment areas likely won’t be the same as what you show in your waiting rooms. There’s a simple reason for that, too. Patients have diverse engagement needs in different spaces.
Content customization and location-specific content scheduling features of UPshow’s patient engagement platform make it easy to schedule content and update displays for each patient’s needs, depending on where they are in your facility.
For instance, while you may offer a popular music playlist in the waiting room, you may want to avoid that in the treatment area. Instead, provide soothing background music that takes a second chair to the face-to-face interaction between patients and their medical team.
UPshow’s patient engagement platform will allow you to:
Patient engagement isn’t just about continuous learning and collaborative decision-making. It’s also critical to maximize their patient experience with entertainment opportunities.
UPshow’s digital patient engagement software can give your patients a well-rounded engagement experience with its entertainment features.
Here’s what you can offer your patients to improve their treatment-area experience:
Medical professionals can only spend so much one-on-one time with each patient, which can make it hard to answer all of their questions or educate them about healthcare issues.
Taking advantage of every opportunity to engage your patients in innovative ways — especially in your treatment rooms — will get them one step closer to experiencing the health outcomes you both desire. With the right patient engagement solutions you can passively and constantly disseminate key treatment information to your patients within and without treatment rooms.
In fact, UPshow’s digital patient engagement solutions can transform your treatment area into an engagement epicenter. Try a risk-free demo today and discover the power of innovative digital signage.
