Are your Patients Satisfied?
The Importance of Patient Satisfaction

Patient satisfaction is one of the most important elements for a practice in ensuring quality healthcare. In the competitive healthcare market, professionals need to distinguish themselves and show that they not only deliver quality services, but the entire patient experience.

Measuring patient satisfaction is important for multiple reasons, 1. Ensure the return of a patient or the recommendation to family and friends 2. Understand the areas that need improvement and implementing an action plan 3. Reimbursement rates might soon be based on patient satisfaction.

1. Retaining patients
When a patient is discharged from a practice a physician will measure the satisfaction of the patient by the outcome of the treatment. In many cases a patient will have a positive experience with the overall treatment, but when asked if they would recommend a family or friend the answer is no. When you dig deeper, cases come up where patients felt that the front office staff was rude and neglectful, the office hours were not convenient or they felt the facility was outdated. These factors could impact the reputation of a practice, but unless a patient addressed these issues, the practice would be unaware. Understanding the full experience a patient is having is vital to making a positive lasting impact.

2. Creating action plans
When addressing key issues in your practice, not only should it be looked at from the perspective of the physician and the staff, but the patient as well. Many issues can be overlooked which is why surveying patients is crucial in making proper adjustments. Once we have addressed the issues like the ones previously mentioned, actions must be taken. It is not enough to just understand the issues, but know how to improve them.

3. Reimbursement rates
There have been talks about reimbursement rates being based on patient satisfaction. A recent quote from Barack Obama states, "And so what we've said is, look, let's invest in health information technologies. Let's invest in preventive care. Let's invest in mechanisms that look at who's doing a better job controlling costs while producing good quality outcomes in various states and let's reimburse on the basis of improved quality, as opposed to simply how many procedures you're doing. Let's do a whole host of things, some of which cost money on the front end, but offer the prospect of reducing costs on the back end."

Even if reimbursement behaviors stay the same, there are more benefits to fully understanding what your patient thinks about the practice.