Specialized healthcare providers know how important patient satisfaction is to success. Word of mouth recommendations as well as online reviews are essential to growth and providing continual great service.
A great way to check in with patients and learn your strengths and weaknesses is using patient surveys. If you want to know what they’re really thinking, just ask!
What Patient Satisfaction Surveys Can Do For You
Skeptical about how reliable these surveys may be?
Here are just a few of the benefits of conducting them:
- Learn what your patients like and don’t like — use this information to improve on weak areas.
- Show patients that you actually care. Giving them a platform to discuss their experience is letting them know you value their opinion. And doing so will foster trust between patient and healthcare provider.
- Improve processes by seeing what your patients actually care about. For example, maybe you’ve been focusing energy on implementing systems for lower wait times, when your patients are more concerned about bedside manner.
There are plenty of ways patient satisfaction surveys can benefit your practice. For now, we’re going to focus on some of the factors for running successful survey campaigns.
What Makes a Great Survey
1. Have a plan
Planning is everything here. You must first identify your goals with the survey or all of this work will be worthless.
Do you want feedback on a specific aspect of your practice?
Is the information you want general or specific?
Take some time to identify your goals.
2. Consider the topics
Be specific and intentional with your questions. You must choose questions that are not only brief and easy to understand, but also cover three areas: quality, access, and interpersonal issues.
3. Use a practical gauge for your needs
Using consistent scales is vital to accurate survey results. This could be a scale from 1-10 or using the “strongly agree, strongly disagree” method. Whichever you go with, stick with it throughout the entire survey.
Using Survey Feedback
Now that you know why and how to use surveys, you should understand how to use that feedback. Conducting surveys won’t do your practice any favors unless you take actionable steps to improve off of the feedback.
Do this by setting goals and giving them timelines. Quarterly and yearly goals are good to start with.
Additionally, use these timelines to compare growth.
Did your practice improve on areas from last year’s (or quarter’s) survey results?
Finally, recognize the team members who receive positive feedback. Acknowledging those in your practice who are doing great things will bring a sense of pride to the office.
The Bottom Line
Using surveys can be hugely beneficial to your practice and patient perception, but only if done correctly. You must have clearly defined goals and an organized plan to maximize survey feedback in a way that will improve your practice.
Want to learn more about how a survey can benefit your business? Speak with one of our experts to discuss steps you can take to grow your practice.
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