Who's Asking The Patients What They Want?

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"The best interest of the patient is the only interest to be considered..." quote by W. J. Mayo

The best and the brightest healthcare professionals tell us what they think their patients want and need, but will often fail to directly ask their patients.  This results in clinical assessments and the important patient vocalizations of needs and desires are rarely captured.

By understanding the Voice of the Patient enables the healthcare organization to understand patient needs and wants outside of the clinical, and, if delivered, can begin to approach the healthcare experience holistically delivering the true best needs of the patient.  If accomplished,  the healthcare organization can determine not only the impact of a patients' clinical position on profitability but also their satisfaction on profitability.   In fact, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that patients who are satisfied with the patient / provider interpersonal relationship are less apt to express dissatisfaction with provider clinical "mishaps". 

To this end, large HMO's and hospitals, are significantly involved in implementing standardized patient feedback surveys.  The satisfaction data along with the clinical data are being used for key business decisions.  By contrast, the small to medium sized clinics, offices, and Managed Care Organizations (MCO's) are rarely doing patient feedback surveys, and if so, usually self implemented either because of cost or human resource implementation challenges. 

In addition, as these smaller healthcare organizations conduct their patient satisfaction studies, it's usually without the guidance of a  research professional versed in what questions should be asked and the way they need to be asked.  This introduces a bias associated with the self created survey and methodology and may not accurately reflect the true patient perception of the healthcare provider.  This underscores the significant need to collect reliable and unbiased satisfaction data from patients on an ongoing basis  at an "affordable" price.

Another critical issue is the time it takes to collect and report on the data collected.  Many healthcare organizations wait up to six months for the results.  I believe that patient feedback should be timely, and therefore, actionable.  I believe that one of the success factors of any patient satisfaction measurement should be the healthcare provider's ability to follow up with patient concerns in a timely manner or address patient satisfaction issues as quickly as possible so as not to undermine the postion of the healthcare organization in the patient community.  

Feel free to post a comment below or to contact me to further discuss these issues and how this can help your healthcare organization -- Fran Nuzzi @ 845.426.1200 or fran.nuzzi@targetresearchgroup.com