CHAPTER 41
Measuring and Improving Patient Satisfaction
Sybil Yeaman
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PATIENT-SATISFACTION SURVEYS HAVE BEEN successfully used for decades by health-care providers to capture data on the quality of medical care and to evaluate improvements in the patient experience that they provide. Over the years, study results have demonstrated that as health-care providers improve patient satisfaction, they also improve patient outcomes. Armed with the knowledge that outcomes are linked to patient satisfaction, government programs and health plans now require hospitals and more health-care providers to conduct consistent patient-satisfaction surveys. As patient satisfaction increases and outcomes improve, risk for adverse events decreases and the cost of medical care goes down. Everyone benefits, starting with the patient. Thus government programs, health plans, and health-care providers will all continue to seek to define, meet, and exceed patient expectations.
Matching the increased focus on patient satisfaction and demand for better performance, there is a growing demand for improved quality in the survey process itself. Simple short-form questionnaires are now being replaced with more complex patient-satisfaction surveys. These newer questionnaires are designed to better evaluate the patient experience on both a physical and cognitive level.
Although measuring patient satisfaction is not yet a requirement for urgent care facilities, surveys should still be conducted consistently by all centers to facilitate continuous improvement practices in patients’ care experiences and staff performance. Use of patient-satisfaction surveys to improve the patient experience will help with the following:
Maximization of patient satisfaction
Development of patient loyalty
Improvement in patient outcomes
Increases in volume through referrals
Increases in marketplace trust
Improvement in contracting and reimbursement
Decreases in malpractice risk
Increases in competitive advantage
There are many additional benefits that can accrue from the use of patient-satisfaction surveys; in addition to improving the patient experience, use of such surveys may facilitate increases in urgent care center market share in an increasingly competitive medical marketplace. Urgent care providers should consider that every satisfied patient who receives care in their facility will become part of their center’s future bottom line and a source of increased business development. When patients share their positive care experience with others, they market the urgent care center more effectively than almost any form of advertisement can. Each patient is a referral source to encourage family and friends to seek care in your facility, rather than in the facility of a competitor. Importantly, the opposite is true for every negative patient experience that takes place in your facility. Negative patient experiences are so damaging because patients tend to share negative experiences more often than positive experiences, and with more people. This translates into financial loss from decreased future patient volume and increased business for your competitors.