Patient Satisfaction: How to Achieve Exceptional Customer Satisfaction and Why it Matters
How do you measure success? For many providers, the answer can be increasingly found with the patient. That’s because patient satis-
faction is becoming ever more important in gauging quality
care. Patients have many avenues today to vocalize their encounters with medical professionals – including social media and other online forums.
Employers are taking a hard look at their bottom lines and seeking out pay-for-performance and other ways to get more value for their healthcare dollars spent. Medicare is poised to begin reimbursing providers based, in part, on patient experiences, and private insurers could follow suit.
“We are going to see heightened transparency and accountability coming to the outpatient side,” said Patty Riskind, senior vice president, medical services, at Press Ganey. Ms. Riskind participated in a Webinar hosted by RYAN Associates on March 21 that addressed patient satisfaction as part of an educational series on the topic.
Press Ganey has been the gold standard for administering patient satisfaction surveys for more than 26 years. The South Bend, Ind.-based firm partners with more than 10,000 healthcare organizations worldwide to create and sustain high-performing health systems.
Ms. Riskind says that outpatient providers should expect that their bottom lines will be affected either positively or negatively by patient experience in the coming years. The Clinician and Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CGCAHPS) survey is a standardized tool to measure patient perceptions of care by physicians in an office setting, according to Press Ganey. It is expected that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will soon roll out CGCAHPS nationally. Therefore, the CGCAHPS survey will most likely become a required measurement for full reimbursement, according to Press Ganey.
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires Medicare to conduct “an assessment of patient experience and patient, caregiver and family engagement” on Medicare’s Physician Compare website by Jan. 1, 2013. Physician pay could be based in part on these scores by 2015. Already, Medicare has started requiring hospitals to report patient survey data in order to be paid in full. Hospitals’ Medicare reimbursement will be based in part on patient satisfaction starting in 2013.
“If you’re not already measuring, you should start,” Ms. Riskind said.
Patty Riskind
“Having commitment from top leadership is essential. Top performers excel when that attitude perpetuates throughout
the organization.” — Patty Riskind, senior vice president, medical services, Press Ganey
Peter Hofstetter
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires Medicare to conduct “an assessment of patient experience and patient, caregiver and family engagement” on Medicare’s Physician Compare website by Jan. 1, 2013. Physician pay could be based in part on these scores by 2015. Already, Medicare has started requiring hospitals to report patient survey data in order to be paid in full. Hospitals’ Medicare reimbursement will be based in part on patient satisfaction starting in 2013.
Getting high marks on patient care from customers requires a full commitment from the organization, said Peter Hofstetter, chief executive officer of Holy Cross Hospital in Taos, New Mexico. Providers must “give patient satisfaction its due and make it part of the culture,” Mr. Hofstetter said during the Webinar. “It’s the leadership piece and making sure patient satisfaction is part of the culture.”
That means also making sure that the focus on patient satisfaction isn’t just “the flavor of the month,” he added. Ms. Riskind agreed. “Top performers excel when the attitude perpetuates throughout the organization,” she said. “There’s an empathy and an understanding about patients.”
A good starting point is to get a baseline measurement of patient satisfaction. “What gets measured gets done,” Ms. Riskind said. “Those organizations that measure have a better sense of the pulse of what’s happening in the organization.”
This means conducting regular surveys of patients, and then getting that data quickly into the hands of the frontline providers and their managers. By quickly, Ms. Riskind means within days. In the outpatient setting, an electronic survey can be sent to a patient the day after the visit. Within two days after the visit, providers can have feedback. Online reporting and e-alerts can accelerate the process and loop information back to providers quickly.
The most effective and efficient way to share patient feedback with staff is via five-minute staff “huddles” at the start of each day. These huddles set the goals of each day and reflect upon what happened the day before, Ms. Riskind said. “It becomes part of the daily routine,” she said. “It’s a way to bond the team together.”
Mr. Hoffstetter said his organization does something similar to a huddle but calls it a de-briefing. These happen after each medical procedure in the hospital, where the team goes over what happened, what went well, and what areas need improvement. He said patient satisfaction scores have gone up since the de-briefings started.
There can be a large gap between the perceptions around patient satisfaction and the reality, said Frank Leone, president and CEO of RYAN Associates. When it comes to patient satisfaction, no news doesn’t necessarily mean good news, he said. “It’s easy to interpret no feedback as satisfaction,” Mr. Leone said. “As opposed to measuring and really knowing.”
The bottom line is data is key to improvement. Getting that data requires reaching out to patients. So, an organization might conduct 30 surveys per month. Typically, Press Ganey will reach out to 20 percent of patients in a practice and then get about a 20 percent response rate from those, Ms. Riskind said. “The more data I have, the more I can do with it,” she said.
Leaders within the organization then must keep that information top of the agenda, Mr. Hofstetter said. “I look for growth and continuous improvement and make sure everyone in the organization has access to that information,” he said.
Everyone from the clinicians to receptionists to administration should be focused on the patient experience, Mr. Leone said. “Having a patient-oriented hiring practice is really central,” he emphasized. “It’s one thing to measure and to look at the data. It’s another thing to measure, look at it and then to act upon it and continuously strive to improve.” – Frank Leone, president and CEO, RYAN Associates
Following through on what the data shows is crucial. “It’s one thing to measure and to look at the data,” Mr. Leone said. “It’s another thing to measure, to look at and then to act upon and continuously strive to improve.”
