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Use a survey to find out what your patients think

Practice Management. By Julie A. Jacob, amednews staff. July 30, 2001.

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It's important to know what your patients think -- about the quality of care they receive, the courteousness of your office staff, the amount of time they have to wait to get an appointment, how hard or easy it was to find your office and the ambience of the waiting room.

After all, satisfied patients will keep coming back to you and will recommend you to their friends and family, while dissatisfied patients will seek out another physician the next time they need medical care. Plus, Blue Cross of California may be only the first of many plans to link your bonus payment to how satisfied your patients are.

The tried-and-true method of getting feedback is the patient survey, say the experts.

Asking patients to fill out a patient satisfaction survey shows them that you care about what they think and "will identify problem areas that you weren't even aware existed," said Crystal S. Reeves, a principal with the Coker Group, a health care consulting firm in Atlanta.

"Physicians need to know this information and take it very seriously," said Todd Welter, a Denver-based consultant for the Medical Group Management Assn.

Many factors other than the quality of medical care affect patients' opinions about their experience at their physician's office, Welter said. No matter how good the physician is, patients may stop going to that physician if the staff is unfriendly, the billing department constantly makes mistakes on their insurance forms or if it's difficult to find parking.

"The objective [of gathering information] is to improve your operations," said Kay Stanley, an associate partner with the Coker Group and co-author of the AMA Press book Assessing and Improving Patient Encounters. [...]