Be honest: do you truly know how happy your patients are with the care you provide? To know their true level of satisfaction, you need to engage in comprehensive feedback methods beyond routine appointment conversation.
Patient surveys are effective methods for collecting patient experiences – providing direct insight into their needs, expectations, experiences, and impressions of your practice. Throughout the years, these surveys have become more and more important, and in 2002 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) introduced the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey, making patient satisfaction a critical metric in measuring the performance of medical entities.
While private medical practices aren’t obliged to use HCAHPS, they may decide to implement this or any other way for collecting feedback, to enjoy the benefits of patient surveys. As a result, you can become more aware of your patients’ opinions and identify the areas of improvement.
Today, patients are more educated and feel more empowered to be actively involved in their healthcare processes (as they should!), which has raised their expectations and has a direct impact on the success of medical practices. Implementing patient surveys might be a difficult task with limited time and resources, but with the help of new technologies and automation, you can easily collect and analyze patients’ feedback efficiently.
What Are Automated Patient Surveys?
Automated patient surveys are digital questionnaires sent to your patients to gather feedback about their medical experience that don’t require manual distribution, collection, or data analysis. Using survey automation tools will help you streamline the survey process from start to finish. These surveys contain predefined questions and are often distributed electronically via email, SMS, or other digital channels.
There are many different types of surveys used in healthcare. Besides CHAPS, commonly used to measure patient satisfaction are Patient Satisfaction Surveys (PSS), Patient-Reported Outcomes (HOOS Jr., KOOS Jr., ASES), and Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys. All of them are focused on three elements: patient satisfaction, patient experience, and the outcome of medical procedures. Automated survey solutions often have features that integrate those elements, such as the ability to create customized questionnaires, conduct real-time data analysis, and compare information.
The Benefits of Patient Surveys – True Value for Your Practice
Patient opinions widely shape your image in the digital landscape, so it’s crucial to take them into consideration. Using patient surveys helps you shape an objective image of yourself and shows you how to further improve the care you provide. Introducing automation will give you the advantage of fast, precise, and timely data analysis, making it easier to focus on the exact feedback you’re interested in.
If you aren’t already collecting patient surveys, now is the time to start. The following key benefits of patient surveys show their potential for medical businesses.
The Patient Remains the Center of Your Care
As previously noted, patients’ expectations have increased. This is due to their greater involvement in healthcare. Thanks to the expansion of digital services, patients now have higher expectations, and patient surveys are crucial to meeting their demands and establishing patient-centric care.
Surveys help you see the patient journey from their perspective. Understanding their needs and concerns allows you to take a proactive approach to improving patient satisfaction and enhancing their overall experience. For instance, seeing that you are immediately addressing the issues your patients aren’t happy with shows that you respect their opinions.
A satisfied patient is a loyal patient. Improving your practice based on their feedback will encourage them to keep you as their first choice, increasing your Lifetime Patient Value and helping you grow your healthcare business further.
Make Data-Based Decisions for the Improvement of Your Practice
Decision-making is rarely an easy job, and it becomes more difficult when you’re not considering your patient’s point of view. It’s like taking a road trip without checking the directions.
Patient feedback typically contains valuable information for your practice. Using it enables you to make more informed and data-based decisions, which can significantly change the course of your performance, both financially and when it comes to quality of care. Also, data-driven decision-making is the foundation of strategic growth.
One of the specific benefits of patient surveys is their ability to help healthcare providers identify changes in patient’s behavior. By tracking those changes, you can more easily decide which approach to choose when engaging with your patients.
Take a Look in the Mirror
Understanding the true quality of your practice may be challenging without gathering feedback from those who experience it. Patient surveys are efficient in showing what sets you apart and what keeps your patients loyal. On the other hand, surveys can make you face the harsh truths—shortcomings and weaknesses that your patients have identified.
In the first case, knowing your strengths can help you promote your practice. By emphasizing the aspects of care your patients find positive, you can position yourself as a trustworthy and reliable healthcare provider with a devoted patient base. On the other hand, analyzing the negative patient feedback helps you step back and determine how to further improve your services. Even though nobody enjoys bad grades, effectively addressing them is key to providing the best level of care possible.
Both strengths and weaknesses are important benefits of patient surveys, allowing you to see the real self-image at any time.
Implement Patient Surveys to Improve Your Profitability
Satisfied patients pave the way for financial growth. Happy patients tend to show up for appointments and return whenever they feel the need to, contributing to sustainable revenue. Also, the positive survey results help you build more precise marketing strategies, reduce additional advertising costs, and support your patient acquisition efforts.
Using patient surveys to boost your financial success positively affects your investment budget, allowing you to set attainable plans and allocate more money to the improvement of your medical business.
Finally, with automated surveys, you can easily identify opportunities for improving the efficiency of the practice. By fixing these issues you’ll save money on unnecessary expenses and reallocate resources more efficiently.
Use the Benefits of Patient Surveys to Shape Patients’ Opinions
In healthcare, reputation is always a hot topic, and patient surveys can have a direct impact on it, either positively or negatively. For example, HCAHPS scores are public, so anyone can see what others have to say about the doctor they’re about to choose.
Positive survey responses will increase demand for your practice, but the negative ones still have their purpose—they help you understand the patient’s expectations and mitigate wider consequences by dealing with critical feedback immediately after it’s received.
To additionally improve your reputation management efforts, automated patient survey messages are a simple and useful way to learn about your patients’ experience. Sending them right after the appointment signals that you care about the patient’s opinion and encourages them to answer positively. At the same time, this approach demonstrates your responsiveness and commitment to patient satisfaction.
Transform Patient Satisfaction into Your Practice’s Success with Automated Surveys
Patient feedback is essential for grasping the true state of your healthcare organization’s operations and patient care quality. It shows how satisfied patients are and highlights areas needing improvement, underlining the key role of surveys in fostering excellence and responsiveness.
However, achieving the benefits of patient surveys is an ongoing and sometimes demanding endeavor, but it doesn’t need to be hard. With the help of automation, it’s possible to blend different survey methods to quickly gather and evaluate patient feedback.
With SocialClimb’s comprehensive and HIPAA-compliant marketing platform, collecting patient surveys is an automated and seamless process. You can choose different survey options, with the opportunity for customized questionnaires to suit your preferences. The platform allows data collection and analysis, transforming it into valuable insights for future use. Instant notifications for below-average scores or negative feedback enable prompt reactions to address the matter. Also, you can conveniently review responses and feedback together or separately, depending on your specific needs and goals.
Automated patient surveys put the old pen-and-paper surveys in the past. Using automation systems is a win-win for your practice, allowing you more time to focus on the growth of your practice while applying the best practices and benefiting from the real-time insights from your patients.
