Looking at the future with alarm? Set your sights on patient satisfaction
Looking at the future with alarm? Set your sights on patient satisfaction
Savvy practices monitor patient concerns, make changes
If your practice isn’t monitoring patient satisfaction, you may face problems down the road as health care consumers and managed care organizations put more emphasis on patient-centered outcomes as a measure of the effectiveness of health care delivery.
"As the health care market changes, it becomes very important for medical groups to know if they are delivering the kind of care they think they are delivering," says Nancy Bundek, PhD, product manager for the survey solutions team for Pfizer Health Solutions (a wholly owned subsidiary of New York City-based Pfizer Inc.), which sells technology-based products and services, including patient satisfaction surveys, to the health care industry. "In this age of consumerism, patients feel their power with their physicians and exercise that power by actively participating in making choices about their health care."
When the Medical Group Management Association in Englewood, CO, listed key indicators for success in its 1998 report Performance and Practices of Successful Medical Groups, patient satisfaction was at the top of the list.
"Keeping patient satisfaction at high levels is perhaps the most important element in maintaining and building a medical group’s capacity. If patients are dissatisfied with the medical practice, all attempts to grow the group will fail," the report states.
Patient satisfaction studies can assist you in:
• pinpointing problem areas in your practice;
• determining what patients are looking for in a health care provider and figuring out how to provide it;
• coming up with strategies to retain the patients you already have and get new patients through word of mouth. (For a list of frequent patient complaints, see p. 107.)
Experts say the health care market is changing rapidly. With mergers, consolidations, and practice acquisitions, the marketplace is becoming more competitive. Consumers recognize that they have a choice, and they are voting with their feet.
The physician group that wants to be the "provider of choice" — whether it’s the choice of individual patients, a managed care plan, or an integrated delivery system — will increasingly find that placing emphasis on patient satisfaction will help it reach its strategic goals, says Mary P. Malone, MS, JD, CHE, vice president of Press, Ganey Associates, a South Bend, IN, health care satisfaction measurement firm.
Patients rely on word of mouth
A prime reason to concentrate on patient satisfaction is that patient recommendations are the best way to get additional business, asserts Tom Aug of Development Partners, a Cincinnati firm specializing in patient satisfaction improvement for physician group practices.
"People select a physician because other trusted people tell them they are good. Published ratings never mean much unless the patient’s cousin or co-worker recommends that physician," Aug says. Recommendations from friends and relatives are the No. 1 reason people choose a physician if they have a choice, he adds.
Even being in a managed care plan doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you will get patients, says Andrea Eliscu, president of Medical Marketing Inc., an Orlando, FL, firm specializing in public relations, marketing, and strategic planning for physicians.
"You get paid only if the patient comes to you," Eliscu says. "Patients have a choice of physicians on the panel. If they know someone who has had one bad experience, they are likely to go elsewhere. It’s a lot harder and more expensive to attract new patients than to keep the patients you have," she adds.
If your managed care plans are already measuring satisfaction, that’s all the more reason to do your own satisfaction studies, Bundek points out.
"A medical group that sits back and doesn’t collect its own data is totally unable to respond to whatever data comes out of the health plan," she explains. For instance, some MCOs are starting to include member satisfaction as part of the basis for compensating physicians.
Collecting your own satisfaction data on an ongoing basis gives your practice the opportunity to be proactive when the annual member satisfaction report from the MCO comes around.
"A practice can point out that they recognized the problem, took steps to correct it, and that subsequent satisfaction surveys show that patients are more satisfied," Bundek says.
Here are other reasons to monitor patient satisfaction:
• Healthier patients.
Researchers have reported that clinical outcomes improve when patients trust their caregivers, Malone says.
"If patients feel they are being communicated with and receiving good services from the caregiver, they are more likely to be compliant with treatment regimes," Malone says. It follows that if patients are compliant, they’re going to get better quicker, she adds.
• Less incentive to sue.
Research shows that in 70% of cases, people don’t sue because of a bad outcome, but because of of a communication problem between the provider and the patient. When a physician ignores a patient complaint, that’s what turns rational people into litigants, experts point out.
• Happier employees.
Employees who spend the day taking care of glitches in the system and dealing with irate patients are less likely to feel fulfilled in their jobs.
"If you’re focused on patient satisfaction, you have a happier organization. Employees are generally happier and have greater satisfaction and rewards if they’re not handling complaints all day. It makes the work day more enjoyable for everybody," Aug says. (For information on how happy employees make happy patients, see p. 101.)
The results of patient satisfaction studies may surprise you.
"Research suggests that patients and physicians care about very different things," says Susan MacRae, RN, research and development associate at The Picker Institute, a Boston-based health care quality assessment and improvement firm. "Technical care is essential, but that isn’t all that’s necessary for healing and health. Patients place a big emphasis on personal and interpersonal experiences during the treatment process."
Patients want more communication with their doctors, she adds. They want access to information, and they want to be able to talk to their doctors.
"Our research shows that patients aren’t very concerned about amenities or touchy-feely issues, like many health care professionals think. What they’re looking for is a broad-based coordinated experience when they are respected as human beings," she adds.
Malone tells of attending a patient satisfaction panel discussion during which three of the four speakers stressed that patients put a high value on privacy in a physician’s office. The physician who moderated the panel expressed surprise that privacy was a big issue.
Why do you want to know what your patients are thinking and what they seek from a provider? Consider that alternative medicine is growing much faster than the primary care business, even though most of the cost of alternative medicine comes from the patients’ own pockets and not their health care plan, Malone points out.
"The same people who complain about $10 co-pays are spending their own money on alternative medicine. If they find value in spending money on alternative medicine, it means that their understanding of quality must be different from physicians’ understanding of quality," she says.
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