Don't let your data collect dust on a shelf
Don't let your data collect dust on a shelf
Use it to improve the way your practice runs
Now that you’ve done patient satisfaction studies, compiled the data, and come up with your patients’ likes and dislikes, what do you do next?
It’s not enough just to gather the data. You’ve got to use it to make improvements in the way you do business, or the effort you made to collect it will be in vain.
At the Salem (OR) Clinic, staff members meet in work groups to address the concerns expressed in surveys and come up with strategies for improvement, says Barbara Gunder, MA, practice administrator.
"It’s imperative to do more than just look at the data. You have to make changes. It should be an ongoing process," says Tom Aug of Development Partners, a Cincinnati firm specializing in patient satisfaction improvement for physician practices.
Review satisfaction data on a regular basis, publicize it to your employees, and be driven by the data you get, Aug suggests.
When Aug works with a practice, his goal is to create a group of people in the practice who will obsess over customer service. He encourages the practice to set up a satisfaction steering committee from all departments in the practice, including physicians.
The group meets regularly to assess the data, make changes, measure it again, and keep the entire staff focused on making improvements, Aug says. For instance, if people complain about a surly receptionist, customer service training may be in order. If patients complain about lengthy waits on the telephone, look at replacing your system or hiring more people to answer the phone.
Fallon Community Health Plans, a federally qualified nonprofit HMO contracting with physicians throughout eastern Massachusetts from its headquarters in Worcester, offers customer service training to its physician offices to teach the staff how to be customer-focused, handle angry patients, and keep patients notified of waits. If scheduling is a problem, the health plan provides consultation to help make improvements, says Christine Micklitsch, FACMPE, MBA, Fallon’s director of physician education and services.
If one department or staff member receives consistently low scores on satisfaction, it’s time to act, says Andrea Eliscu, president of Medical Marketing Inc., an Orlando, FL, firm that provides public relations, marketing, and strategic planning for physicians.
"It’s hard to say, You’re not doing a good job and nobody likes you.’ But if an area is scoring low, you should tell them the customers don’t like the way it’s being done and talk about how it can be changed," she adds.
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