Collecting Patient Feedback: A Guide to Improve Patient Satisfaction & Retention
Patient feedback is a powerful tool for enhancing the quality of health care and patient satisfaction. With the help of patient feedback management software, healthcare providers can collect this feedback to acquire and retain more patients.What is Patient Feedback?
Patient feedback is the opinions, reviews, and thoughts that healthcare organizations gather from their patients. From the healthcare contact center to the doctor’s diagnosis, each step of the patient journey presents an opportunity to learn about patient expectations and behavior.
The goal of collecting patient feedback is to pinpoint areas for improvement in healthcare operations. For instance, a hospital could have world-class medical staff delivering high-quality care. But, if patients have to endure long wait times to see the doctor, they are still not likely to report a positive experience.
Healthcare centers usually capture this feedback with the help of surveys, reviews, and conversations at different points of the patient journey. Here is an overview of when and why each institution collects feedback.
Hospitals and Clinics
In hospitals and clinics, the medical staff gathers feedback from inpatients and outpatients to see what steps in the patient journey need improvement.
Each type of patient care involves feedback collection at the following points in the patient journey:
- Inpatient care
- Appointment booking – helps understand if the patient is satisfied with wait times or staff behavior.
- Medical diagnoses – provides information on the patient’s experience with the accuracy and price of medical tests.
- Hospital stay – gathers feedback on the patient’s stay in the hospital, including quality of treatment, staff support, and cleanliness.
- Discharge – captures patient opinions on discharge, such as how long it took and how well the doctor followed up with them.
- Outpatient care
- Check-in – gathers patient feedback on wait times and quality of staff support during the check-in process.
- Consultation with the doctor – offers information on the patient’s satisfaction with the doctor’s communication and overall behavior.
Dental Clinic
Dental clinics capture feedback from patients to pinpoint any issues with their oral healthcare service and general operations. They usually collect patient feedback at the following points:
- Appointment scheduling – helps understand the patient’s experience with ease of booking, staff support, and wait times.
- Dental treatment – captures patient feedback on the quality of dental care, dentist’s communication, and treatment plan.
- Billing process – collects feedback on the transparency of costs and availability of various payment options.
- Follow-up – provides information on how well the dentist followed up with the patient post-treatment, including the quality of aftercare instructions.
Aged Care
Aged care facilities rely on feedback loops to make residents feel more comfortable and satisfied. The goal is to check in with them and their family at the following points to see if the center is meeting their unique needs:
- Patient admission – collects information on the ease and convenience of admitting a new resident.
- Medical check-ups – highlight issues, if any, with daily health assessments and if the resident is satisfied with them.
- Daily care – captures resident feedback on the quality of care, support from staff, and general activities.
- Family visits – collects feedback from family members on their satisfaction levels with the facility, including staff, hygiene, environment, and healthcare.
- Discharge – covers any complaints from the resident or their family about the convenience of the discharge process and support from staff.
Pharmacies
Did you know that 58% of Americans view pharmacies as a first step when faced with a non-emergency medical issue? A pharmacy gathers feedback at the following touchpoints to better understand patients:
- Prescription dispensing – helps understand if the medication was safely, correctly, and appropriately dispensed to the patient.
- Consultation – captures patient feedback on consultations offered by the staff, including dosage and general medication advice.
- Purchase and billing – collects information on how smooth it was for the patient to purchase medicine and process payments.
Why is Patient Feedback Important?
Patient feedback is primarily important for enhancing patient satisfaction and helping the healthcare organization with brand reputation management.
Feedback highlights the organization’s strengths and weaknesses when it comes to fulfilling a patient’s needs. Hospitals and clinics use this kind of insight to make data-driven decisions to improve their workflow and enhance patient satisfaction.
For instance, if a hospital receives multiple complaints about wait times during appointment booking, it has an immediate area of concern to address.
Moreover, collecting patient feedback encourages transparency and communication with patients. By becoming proactive listeners and responders to their needs, organizations show that they value their patients’ thoughts and feelings.
As a result, patients are likely to trust these healthcare centers and give them a positive review online. Given that over 70% of patients consult online reviews before visiting a new center, it’s important to focus on practices that boost patient satisfaction ratings.
Benefits of Collecting Patient Feedback
Collecting patient feedback helps organizations make informed decisions on delivering a positive patient experience. Here are a few key benefits of capturing feedback from patients:
Higher Quality of Healthcare
A key component of performance assessment is to look at areas for improvement, especially those suggested by patients. This is where feedback is beneficial as it pinpoints the exact issues to prioritize and fix in order to deliver a higher quality of care. It provides specific answers to important questions about the patient experience.
Enhanced Patient Satisfaction and Retention
A higher quality of health care has a positive impact on patient satisfaction ratings. When patients feel that an organization successfully met their care needs, they are more likely to give it a glowing recommendation online or otherwise.
Satisfied patients not only provide positive recommendations, but they are also likely to become loyal customers themselves. Therefore, by collecting and acting upon feedback, healthcare providers boost patient retention.
Data-driven Decisions
The last thing healthcare centers want to do is take a guess at what works for their patients. It’s important to have access to actionable data that provides specific insights into improving the customer experience. Collecting patient feedback helps organizations capture and analyze this data to enable continuous improvements in their services.
How to Collect Patient Feedback?
From kiosk surveys at check-in to post-treatment email surveys, patient surveys help organizations collect valuable feedback at each step of the patient journey.
Patient Feedback Survey
Surveys are great options for feedback collection because they let patients reflect on their experience right away. Moreover, surveys allow patients to be more forthright and accurate in their feedback by removing the need for an in-person conversation.
By issuing surveys at key touchpoints during the patient journey, healthcare centers gain targeted insights on improving their operations. Here is an overview of the surveys healthcare centers use throughout the patient journey:
1. Kiosk surveys
A touchscreen display device placed at strategic points in the hospital, like the reception area, is a popular way to collect feedback.
Kiosks are typically used to survey patients on their experience after check-in, consultation with the doctor, and booking follow-up appointments.
2. Email surveys
According to a 2024 report on email statistics, 88% of respondents said they use email daily, with 39% checking their inboxes 3-5 times a day. Therefore, email remains one of the most reliable channels for organizations to gather customer feedback.
For healthcare centers, sending an email survey right after discharge is a great way to collect insights from the patient. Emails can feature a link to the full survey form or a straightforward one-click survey embedded within the email body itself.
3. Mobile app and website surveys
Healthcare providers can also leverage mobile apps and website widgets to collect patient feedback smoothly. The idea is to integrate always-on surveys within the apps and websites to prompt customers for specific (post-consultation, discharge, etc.) or general feedback.
Feedback from Online Reviews
In addition to surveys, online reviews offer another valuable method for gathering patient feedback and play a crucial role in healthcare reputation management. Beyond providing key insights and actionable data, online reviews can:
- Authentic Patient Experiences: Reviews often capture unfiltered, real-world patient experiences, providing healthcare providers with genuine insights into what patients appreciate or dislike about their care.
- Volume and Diversity of Feedback: Healthcare providers can gather a large volume of feedback from a wide range of patients, offering a broader view of service quality across various demographics and healthcare needs.
- Timeliness: Patients tend to leave reviews soon after their visits, giving providers immediate feedback that can highlight pressing issues or recent successes.
- Publicly Accessible Insights: Since reviews are public, they not only provide feedback but also shape the provider’s reputation. This transparency encourages healthcare providers to address concerns quickly and improve their services.
- Building Trust: By engaging with reviews, responding to patient concerns, and showcasing a commitment to improvement, healthcare providers can enhance trust and credibility within the community.
- Benchmarking: Reviews allow providers to compare their performance against competitors in the same field or location, giving insights into areas where they can improve relative to others.
Regardless of which method is used, healthcare providers will receive both positive and negative feedback:
Examples of Positive Patient Feedback
- “Efficient, friendly, and informed doctor. She carefully checked my medical records and I felt confident in her expertise.”
- “The receptionist was very helpful on the phone. He was polite and took care to answer each of my questions in detail.”
- “I visited the app to book an appointment, thinking it might take a week to get one. However, to my pleasant surprise, I got an appointment the next day!”
Examples of Negative Patient Feedback
- “Avoid going to this doctor’s clinic. He didn’t seem interested in spending time on the patients at all. He just prescribes medication and goes away without any explanation!”
- “I found that I’d been billed for services I never received! I won’t be returning to this dentist as this is unacceptable.”
- “The facility was dirty and outdated, which is not what I expect from a hospital. I didn’t feel comfortable at all.”
How to Manage Patient Feedback?
Be it positive or negative, it’s important to know how to effectively manage patient feedback. The goal is to organize the collected feedback, analyze it to gain valuable insights and focus on high-priority issues before checking in with the patient again.
Here are four key steps to follow after collecting patient feedback:
1. Organize and respond to feedback
The first step to effective feedback management is organizing the patient feedback coming from various channels.
A dedicated feedback portal or a CRM system helps integrate multiple pieces of feedback in one place for easier analysis. It is also useful to categorize feedback in this step by overall sentiment (positive or negative) for a targeted approach.
The next step is to respond to the feedback based on its sentiment. While automated responses save time, it’s good practice to have a dedicated support team to contact the patients as well.
2. Analyze the feedback for useful insights
Analysis of patient feedback reveals the exact issues and opportunities that healthcare providers must focus on. With the help of AI-enhanced customer feedback analysis, organizations can speed up the process of capturing actionable insights.
One popular method here is sentiment analysis, which leverages natural language processing (NLP) to determine if the feedback is positive, negative, or neutral. Similarly, AI is useful for detecting patterns in data, such as recurring issues faced by patients concerning wait times or staff behavior.
The results of this analysis reveal priority areas to fix immediately for an enhanced patient experience.
3. Take immediate action based on the analysis
Healthcare centers should encourage their staff to take instant action on patient feedback. For example, if the analysis shows a recurring issue with wait times, the staff should optimize their workflow or look to hire more people to reduce delays for patients.
A good practice for organizations is to offer a token of apology, regardless of the exact action taken. These tokens could include a free checkup or a discount on medication. The idea is to offer a bonus that further affirms the organization’s commitment to patient satisfaction.
4. Follow up with the patient
In order to create a feedback loop, healthcare providers should follow up with the patient, informing them of the actions taken. This step builds trust as it signals to the patient that the hospital or clinic is willing to hear them out and act on their feedback.
Patient Feedback Software
When choosing the right patient feedback software to collect, organize, and analyze data, there are a few key factors to consider:
- Multi-channel feedback collection: The software should be able to accept and collect feedback from various sources, including email, kiosk surveys, and SMS.
- Automated survey and feedback response: The software should feature automated workflows for issuing surveys at key touchpoints in the patient journey, from check-in to discharge. Similar workflows for sending instant replies to patient feedback are also helpful.
- Customizable surveys: Healthcare providers should invest in software that allows them to represent their brand. Personalized surveys featuring the brand’s colors and style are likely to engage more patients.
- Analytics: The software should feature analytical tools to provide useful insights from patient feedback. For instance, it should support sentiment analysis to distinguish between positive and negative reviews.
- Integrations: To ensure smooth patient feedback management, the software should support integration with electronic medical records (EMR) and CRM systems. By providing information like patient demographics and clinical records, these integrations enable more specific analysis.
How Pearl-Plaza Can Help Collect Patient Feedback
Pearl-Plaza’s feedback management system lets you collect, organize, and analyze patient feedback in one place. Our integrations and award-winning technology will help you capture actionable insights into patient expectations.
As a result, you get access to all the data you need to deliver the best possible patient experience. Schedule a demo today to see how you can get started!
References
Wolters Kluwer. Wolters Kluwer’s Pharmacy Next survey shows 58% of Americans likely to first seek non-emergency healthcare at pharmacies. (https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/news/survey-shows-americans-seek-non-emergency-healthcare-at-pharmacies) Accessed 9/16/24.Â
Healthgrades. Top Five Things Patients Prioritize When Choosing a Doctor. (https://b2b.healthgrades.com/insights/blog/top-five-things-patients-prioritize-when-choosing-a-doctor) Accessed 9/16/24.
ZeroBounce. Into the Inbox: Email Statistics Report for 2024. (https://www.zerobounce.net/email-statistics-report/) Accessed 9/16/24.