As a healthcare business, you must clearly understand what your patients think of your facilities, treatment, and other aspects of your service. This is why the importance of patient surveys in the healthcare industry cannot be ignored. Insights derived from patient satisfaction surveys can help your organization refine its approach when it comes to taking care of patients, which, in turn, leads to benefits such as a greater ROI for your business. No matter the organization’s size, success ultimately depends on how well you keep patients satisfied. To help shed some light on the issue, we are going to focus on the steps for designing effective patient surveys in the healthcare industry.
Definition of patient survey and its importance
Patient satisfaction and message testing is a vital barometer for any healthcare business. It is, however, fairly difficult to measure, given that not all patients will be on the same page as far as evaluating your care efforts is concerned. This is where patient surveys can prove to be an exceedingly helpful tool for healthcare institutions. Patient survey programming helps organizations to evaluate their care quality, their perceptions, thoughts and hence work to ensure better healthcare outcomes. Alongside helping measure the service quality, patient surveys also give you access to valuable data and insights that can help your organization improve its practice and the overall patient experience.
How to design patient surveys
1. Identify your objectives
You may have come across the quote, “without a goal, you can’t score.” The saying is also true when it comes to market research efforts, irrespective of the methodologies you deploy. When designing patient survey programs, you must figure out the potential pain points that you wish to address. For instance, if your healthcare institution experiences long patient wait times, consider asking relevant questions that give you concrete insights into the underlying problems. Avoid asking generic questions like “Are you satisfied?” Instead, your survey questions should be both relevant and solvable. For instance, you may ask questions like “How satisfied are you with the length of time you have to wait to meet a care provider?” Whether you are aiming for a general survey or a more technical lab director survey, the effectiveness of your findings, depends on how clear you are on your objectives.
2. Create survey mechanism
The next step is to create a relevant survey mechanism. During the exercise, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. The motto during this phase is to create a questionnaire that helps you get accurate answers, and not a generic one. Ask questions related to your patients’ access to care, ease of communication, and their interactions with staff/physicians. Additionally, healthcare researchers often make the mistake of asking binary questions (that can be answered with a yes or no). Instead, it’s recommended that you should provide four answers to a single question. This would help you to figure out the scale of patient satisfaction or dissatisfaction. For example, if your question is “Are you satisfied with our healthcare infrastructure”, then the answer options should be “very satisfied/somewhat satisfied/neutral/somewhat dissatisfied/very dissatisfied”.
3. Choose a survey platform
After you are clear on your survey objectives and have designed the questions, it’s time to choose a survey platform. There are four ways you can deploy your survey program:
- Online platform
- In-message
Only you can decide which platform works the best for you. If possible, adopt all the platforms at once. You can also opt for expert help with your survey programming and survey data processing by partnering with a leading provider of market research support.
Final word
As said before, the best foot forward when it comes to conducting patient surveys is to partner with the best healthcare market research service provider. When looking for healthcare survey programming services, Unimrkt Healthcare has got you covered. We are a full-service primary market research agency, delivering a wide range of medical market research support offerings in Pharma & Life sciences, Medical Technology and Devices, Animal Healthcare, and Digital Healthcare. Our experienced team of research professionals is equipped with extensive knowledge and skills in designing and implementing a comprehensive range of unique research methodologies and survey data processing. We help players in the healthcare industry across the world come up with tactical and strategic decisions to address all sorts of business challenges. To learn more about our open-end coding market research services, call +91 124 424 5210 or email sales@unimrkthealth.com. You may also fill out our contact form, and our representatives will get in touch with you at the earliest.
