Focusing on your patients experience in your medspa will result in happier patients, more positive word of mouth, and fewer headaches for you and your staff.

Physicians are often focused on outcomes, many times at the cost of a patients experience, but that's just bass-akwards in elective cosmetic medicine where the real outcome should be measured almost exclusively in long term patient satisfaction and not in visible results.

Unconvinced? Here are a couple of reasons that you'll want to focus on your patient's experience and how you might think about putting experience at the top of your patient interactions:

1. There's new research that shows that purchases made on 'experiences' results in more happiness that spending money on tangible goods. Concert tickets, piano lessons, a fine dinner... all of these elicit more happiness than physical products and the effects last longer.
   
   "Purchasing things like televisions, clothes and coffee machines won't make you happier overall -- but buying experiences maximizes happiness," says Michael Norton in a CNN interview. (He's an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and co-author of the book, "Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending.")
2. We humans get additional pleasure from social interactions and bonding across the entire experience, starting with the anticipation and continuing on as positive memories. The difference is really one of degree with the social aspects having significant impact on how past experience are perceived. The result is that 'experiences' have additional reinforcement that happens over time adding to those positive feelings and acting as reminders.

 The focus on patient experience clearly explains how physicians or clinics who might not have nearly as significant outcomes are still able to compete, and in many cases dominate, clinics who focus entirely on the physical results their delivering. It's an important distinction and means real euros and dollars for your clinic.