As much as healthcare is a vocation, it is also a business. In fact, in the U.S., healthcare is now deemed a strictly business term. But that doesn’t mean patient satisfaction should take second place to profit.
Importance of Patient Satisfaction
Like any business, a healthcare institution will not thrive without patient (customer) satisfaction. Patient satisfaction examples include active communication, technical skills, hospital environment, and staff responsiveness.
Because it’s impossible to measure patient satisfaction directly, healthcare institutions rely (or should) on patient satisfaction surveys. Surveys help assess the patient experience during their hospital stay. They do more than determine whether patients are happy with the food and care they receive. Surveys can also affect clinical outcomes. They can reveal the likeliness of patient retention and even indicate the chances of a medical malpractice claim.
When considering these factors, you cannot overstate the importance of patient satisfaction surveys.
Overview of Patient Satisfaction Surveys
There are several patient surveys in healthcare options that hospitals can use. These surveys are commonly used throughout the U.S. and partly stem from the original Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey.
The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality created the 27-question survey. The HCAHPS survey helped medical institutions fulfill three primary goals. These included providing patients with a valuable hospital comparison, incentivizing advanced care quality, and improving care transparency.
Benefits of Patient Satisfaction Surveys
Patient satisfaction surveys in healthcare have come a long way since, but they still aim to improve the patient experience to retain patients.
Improved Patient Experience
Whether you own a private practice or a hospital, you should measure patient satisfaction by conversing with patients, starting with a survey. Responding to patient feedback can help you improve your services. Getting the feedback in the first place can also help you identify problems with patient service.
Enhanced Communication
Starting a conversation leads to enhanced communication. This helps your patients know what to expect without you having to live up to unreasonable expectations. Communication plays a huge role in patient dissatisfaction. An initial conversation can often help prevent a negative experience.
Building Trust and Credibility
Communication between doctors and patients does wonders for building patient trust and credibility. And it all starts with a simple survey. Even if a patient had a negative experience, responding to the subsequent survey and resolving the situation can help turn things around. It can even help your practice retain the customer.
Surveys Help Improve Performance
If you get a lot of surveys back and one feedback aspect stands out, it can help you improve that part of patient service. This means you can use real data to make positive improvements to increase patient satisfaction and loyalty.
Key Components of a Patient Satisfaction Survey
A patient satisfaction survey in healthcare institutions should be structured in such a way that it provides only the necessary information. Key components include the following:
Collecting Feedback for Improvement
Collecting feedback is the primary purpose of a patient satisfaction survey. It allows patients to express their concerns and compliments. While compliments are great, healthcare professionals must take concerns and negative feedback seriously. It is the only way to improve patient care and satisfaction.
Providing Patient-Centered Care
Surveys can help you focus your attention on providing patient-centered care. Patients are not just numbers to work through. Patients have fears and worries, which you can relieve by reassuring them and providing excellent care. Patient satisfaction surveys will help you understand and meet patient needs. This will allow you to provide a personalized patient experience.
Measuring Team Performance
A patient survey can also help you measure your team’s performance. Surveys typically include questions about service delivery and staff interaction. Getting this type of feedback will help you identify areas for improvement to speed up processes and make patient experiences more efficient.
Encouraging Transparency
When you act on surveys and resolve issues, you show your patients that you run a transparent practice or hospital. Transparency is one of the most important factors in the client experience because it will determine a patient’s loyalty.
Improving Patient Retention and Loyalty
Patient loyalty is crucial for the success of your institution. The feedback you get from surveys will indicate how likely word-of-mouth recommendations are. It will also give insight into whether patients will return for future health care.
Cost Transparency and Fair Billing Processes
A patient survey will also tell you whether patients are satisfied with the costs associated with their care. It will show whether patients understood hospital costs and whether staff addressed their financial situation with sensitivity.
9 Patient Satisfaction Survey Questions
If you want to set up a patient satisfaction survey to help improve your patient care, you should include the following crucial questions:
1. How did you find the experience of booking appointments?
The purpose of this question is to determine whether patients can easily book appointments or whether they experience technical difficulties. If you get negative feedback about the booking process, you have a golden opportunity to fix the issue and retain patients.
2. Were our staff empathetic to your needs?
Empathy, or the lack thereof, is often the basis of negative survey feedback. It is important to include this question in your survey to know whether your staff displays genuine empathy for patients. It is essential to take the time to understand a patient’s needs and explain their medical care options. Patients who feel neglected or ignored will likely allude to a lack of empathy in their survey response.
3. How long did you have to wait until the doctor attended to you?
Wait times are a sore point with patients, especially if they make an appointment and still have to wait. If patients are unhappy with how long they wait to see a doctor, you should consider automating the overall workflow in your practice to reduce wait times.
Use an online scheduling system to improve patient flow. This will have a massive impact on the feedback you get.
4. Were you satisfied with the doctor you were allocated with?
Sometimes, patients don’t get along with a doctor. It happens. To prevent the same patient from seeing the same doctor in the future, you should take their feedback to heart and allow them to see a different doctor. You can use a CRM system to allocate patients to doctors to minimize frustration.
5. How easy is it to navigate our facility?
This question is crucial because sometimes medical facilities are hard to navigate, especially with wheelchairs or other apparatus. Sometimes, a hospital is difficult to navigate simply because the signage is inadequate. Improving this based on survey feedback will improve patient satisfaction and speed up care delivery.
6. How happy are you with the doctor’s treatment?
Allocate enough time between appointments so that patients don’t feel rushed. When patients feel like doctors don’t listen to them or rush them to get to the next appointment, it makes for a negative experience. Use this type of feedback to get the right doctors and medical staff on board.
7. Were we able to answer all your questions?
It is essential to answer common patient questions, even if you do so via a FAQ section on your website. This goes together with being empathetic and really listening to patients.
8. How likely are you to recommend us to your friends and family?
The answers you get to this question will give you all the information you need to make the required changes to your patient care. If patients are likely to recommend your services, you’re doing things right. If not, things need to change.
9. How can we improve your next visit?
Asking how you can improve your services shows patients that you are committed to providing excellent patient care. It also shows that you want to offer the kind of care that people expect from healthcare institutions.
Analyzing Patient Satisfaction Survey Results
Getting the feedback that you need is only one part of the process. You must analyze and interpret the survey data you receive to make improvements.
Interpreting Results
Review all research questions before analyzing your overall survey data. Sift through all the responses and interpret what your patients are saying. Sort the data between close-ended responses and open-ended responses. Close-ended responses have no explanations, while open-ended responses contain personal opinions. Use both to improve your healthcare service offering.
Identifying Areas for Improvement
Split up your data by demographics so that you can identify areas of improvement. What works for the older generation may not work for the younger generation. So, if people want a simpler booking system, you may still have to include a manual system for older patients and an online system for younger patients.
Implementing Changes Based on Feedback
Don’t make changes based on what you think your patients want. Make changes based on what they tell you they want. All changes should be a direct result of feedback. This will show patients that you take their concerns seriously and you want to improve your services.
Addressing Challenges in Surveying
Surveying patients doesn’t come without its challenges. Prepare yourself to overcome these challenges so you get the information you need.
Overcoming Survey Fatigue
Your patients may be sick and tired of surveys because they likely receive them from businesses, online platforms, and more. You can overcome survey fatigue by making your surveys short (less than 10 questions) and to the point. Don’t include too many open-ended questions or use double-barreled questions.
Handling Negative Feedback
If you get an overwhelmingly negative response via survey feedback, don’t ignore it. Work your way through each survey and respond to each patient personally. This is the only way to resolve issues with patient care and retain patients in the long term.
Adapting to Evolving Patient Expectations
Patient expectations will keep changing over time. You should constantly work and adapt to meet these changes. Sending out consistent surveys will help you do that. It may be challenging at first, but it is important to eventually meet patients where they are. This will help your institution improve patient satisfaction, build a strong reputation in the healthcare industry, and stay successful.
