Taking action on patient satisfaction survey results
Taking action on patient satisfaction survey results
After the survey is over
You’ve heeded the call to conduct patient satisfaction surveys. You have tallied your results and written a report, which you have duly passed out to your physicians and management staff. Now what?
According to Keith Borglum, vice president of the Santa Rosa, CA, consulting firm Professional Management & Marketing, there is little point in doing a patient satisfaction survey if you don’t take action based on your results.
The oncology and hematology practice of Douglas Kaufman, MD, in San Pablo, CA, did its first survey last summer, says office manager Brenda Morrison. "We wanted to find out what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong," Morrison says. "We asked what the patients thought could make the practice better."
The results included some complaints about wait times. While Morrison says this is hardly surprising for a medical practice, she also learned that providing more communication to the patients about potentials waits was an easy and acceptable solution.
"They wanted to understand what the delay was," she says. "The real problem was a lack of communication." Morrison’s simple fix was to make front office staff responsible for telling patients if there would be a delay and the probable length. Back office staff were responsible for keeping the receptionist informed of delays.
Act on information
Such simple actions are often all it takes to correct a problem, says Borglum. What is vital is that after you have a list of problem areas from your surveys, you create an action plan with a time line and the people responsible for each step of the plan.
"When you have a problem and take the time to come up with a solution, then you have to commit to taking that action," he says.
For instance, another common complaint from patients is the lack of selection in reading material in the waiting room. "If you have a complaint that your magazines are out of date, then put someone in charge of ordering new magazines and ensuring that old ones are removed from the reception area," says Borglum.
Make sure the person responsible is required to address the issue on a regular basis, too. In this case, the magazines should be checked for timeliness every two weeks or so.
One way of ensuring you take action is to send a letter to your patients following the survey. (See sample letter, above.)
The cost of such a letter is about 50 cents per patient, says Borglum. The letter should also be framed and placed in your waiting area or on the counter of your reception desk.
Borglum also recommends that specialists send a separate letter to their referring sources which outline the survey results and actions you will be taking to address any negative comments.
You can also make the changes that stem from your surveys the basis of practice promotion. For example, Borglum says that if complaints were about access and operating hours, you may decide to open one evening per week or on weekends. If you do that, you can put an announcement in your local paper that touts your new hours of operation.
Morrison says there are other ways to make your survey a marketing tool. Managed care organizations, for instance, like to see that practices they are considering adding to their panel care about patient satisfaction.
And Morrison has found another way to put the survey results to use. Her office recently went from a two physician practice to a solo operation and is currently looking for potential merger partners.
She says that taking patient satisfaction survey results to those meetings is a great way to show other practices that Dr. Kaufman’s patients appreciate him and his practice and that where there is a problem, the physician and his staff are willing to address it.
The key is to take action, says Borglum. "Do the survey; tabulate the results; let your staff know what they are and then brainstorm on problem areas," he says.
Morrison agrees. "There is a lot of competition out there, and you have to be the best practice you can," she says. "You have to be willing to make changes to do that."
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