Collecting feedback from patients is a crucial aspect of health management and running a successful healthcare practice. There are various tricks and tips that can make feedback collection more effective and, therefore, can be used to improve the quality of service as well as deal with individual patient concerns or complaints.
Feedback is a dynamic process and to make sure it runs smoothly it needs to be optimized for the patient who gives the feedback and the healthcare provider who needs it to meet their patients’ needs and to improve the quality of care at their medical practice.
Here are a few things that need to be take into consideration to do that:
Give patients some privacy
Patients should be provided with a comfortable environment because a secure setting encourages honest and constructive feedback, which can significantly enhance the quality of care. Patients should be able to give their feedback in a place where they wouldn’t feel like they’re being watched by staff while they’re doing so.
Keep it short and sweet
Giving feedback should quick and easy, Studies have found that only 9% of people thoughtfully fill out long feedback forms and over 70% will not even finish them. Therefore the feedback form needs to have only a few questions that are well thought out to ensure the information you need is obtained without being repetitive. Giving feedback should not feel like a chore to patients. Keeping questions that involve typing or writing out long answers to a minimum will encourage more patients to give feedback. Sticking to multiple choice questions or answer scales will make surveys less tedious for the patients and ensure a higher response rate.
Know when to ask
The timing at which feedback is solicited from the patient plays a very important role in how willing patients are to provide feedback and how well they do it. Patients should be asked for feedback preferably once near the end of their patient experience at a time where they’re free
Collecting feedback needs to be well thought out, from how it is collected to where and when, to ensure the feedback collected is of high quality and can be used by the healthcare provider to inform improvements in the way services are provisioned..