Getting It Right
Patient satisfaction occurs when a healthcare provider makes a patient feel well cared for while also making him feel personally cared about inside his healthcare experience from the patient's point of view. As the industry moves deeper and deeper into the emerging market of value based purchasing, competition and consumerism, ensuring that patients feeling well cared for and cared about could easily differentiate who makes it to the list of preferred providers.
The linkages between quality and satisfaction measurement programs will be critically important. While a provider's quality program ensures the systems to promote safety, quality and great experiences, its satisfaction program measures just how well it is doing in the eyes of the patient. Leaders who rely on soft quality and soft satisfaction as their measures of success may be very disappointed when the outcome is their decline on the highway to health care's future.
In the emerging market, an effective quality program works to ensure that all systems and structures operate to:
1. get patient care and experiences right the first time.
2. minimize the risk that an error will make it all the way to the patient.
3. ensure that all care delivery is consistent with current knowledge and practices known to offer patients the best chance at optimal health and well-being.
4. create the kind of experiences that can drive patient loyalty.
An effective satisfaction measurement program digs for the information that tells a provider how well they are doing from the patient's perspective. It works to measure the perceptions of SAVIS - Solution, Access, Value, Information and Safety.
- Solution: Did the provider offer a solution appropriate to my defined problems and needs?
- Access: Were the services adequately accessible in a user-friendly way?
- Value: Was there value in the services received and the encounters within my experience?
- Information: Did the information provided to me meet my defined problems and needs in a way that worked for me?
- Safety: Did I feel safe inside my experience?
Healthcare Satisfaction Index is designed to create the kind of satisfaction systems and tools that can dig deep to better understand patient perception and support quality in driving for stronger patient perceptions. A satisfied patient is not necessarily a loyal patient. Those providers who seek out the knowledge through the eyes of the patient without fear and are willing act on it with the goal of always reaching to be better tomorrow than they are today have the best chance of experiencing genuine patient loyalty.
Patient Satisfaction Blog
The debate over qualitative versus quantitative data is heating up in health care as providers look for ways to effectively measure and manage patient satisfaction in an increasingly competitive market place. The answer doesn’t live in choosing one or the other. It is found in learning how to marry the benefits of each in a [...]
Effective measurement of patient satisfaction is much more than just sending out surveys and aggregating results. When effectively woven into a quality program, it allows a provider a final opportunity to connect with the patient, determine what would foster patient loyalty in the future and catch those issues that have angered patients but slipped through [...]
Providers that manage patient satisfaction measurement as one more form of soft quality in today’s environment choose to increase their risk of ending up as a casualty along the highway to health care’s future. An activity falls into the category of “soft quality” when its design and implementation creates the perception of action without it [...]
The impact of a patient satisfaction measurement system is influenced by how important it is perceived to be by the patient.
An effective patient satisfaction system works to be responsive to the four major consumer groups.
An effective patient satisfaction system helps an organization to better understand those patient value propositions that are most important to the consumers of health care services.
An effective patient satisfaction system is proactively aligned with the changing needs and dynamics of the patient relationship.
Always build your surveys to support achieving the Ten Commandments of Patient Care.
Quality begins on the inside... and then works its way out. -- Bob Moawad
Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves. -- Dale Carnegie
Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable. -- Lord Chesterfield
Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. -- Andrew Carnegie
Change does not change tradition. It strengthens it. Change is a challenge and an opportunity; not a threat. -- Prince Phillip of England
