How to Properly Use Surveys in Healthcare
What does the future hold in store for your healthcare center? Will your costs justify themselves? Is there any room for improvement? Or should you be tapping yourself and your employees on the back?
Whether you own a large medical center or small dentistry, you must know that all the answers to the above-stated questions reside in a single person – your patient. He is the one you should be consulting before deciding anything. And how do you do that?
It’s simple as that – you just ask the right questions.
If you create the proper survey, getting valuable feedback might save you a lot of time and money. Here are some guidelines that you should follow while building your questionnaire.
1. Ask the Right Questions
It’s a basic starting point that you should consider carefully and thoroughly. To begin with, you must have a goal in mind – a premise that will shape everything you need to know. That way, you can be sure that you are asking the relevant questions. What is the point of knowing how often do your patients brush their teeth if you are a doctor of internal medicine?
Jokes aside, you should concentrate your questions around three major issues, and organize them in accordance with your primary intention. These are:
· Quality – do your patients think they are given valuable healthcare?
· Accessibility – is your system appointment-friendly?
· Interpersonal – is your stuff providing the pleasant surroundings?
Don’t think either set of questions is less important. Remember, your patient is forming his opinion considering the entirety of service that is given to him. And don’t forget to ask him the essential question – are you satisfied? Not only because you will acquire valuable data, but because you will demonstrate that he comes first for you and that you are willing to constantly improve.
The patient won’t forget that.
2. Ask Questions in the Right Way
If you strive to obtain valuable data, you have to make sure that people say what they mean. Here are some ways you can do that:
· Provide anonymity – it’s an obvious and proven fact that people tend to be more honest if they don’t sign anything with their names.
· Formulate the questions precisely – the story behind this can last at least 2 hours, but it all comes down to this: keep it simple and be specific. Don’t confuse patients with emotional language or double-barrel questions. Stay neutral and include consistent scales. In other words, build trust while asking questions.
3. Draw your Conclusions Properly
Reading and interpreting acquired data is the most complex part of the survey process. It’s a statistical work that can be time-consuming and a lot of healthcare centers use software with built-in analysis.
Either way, make sure that you don’t end up with a collection of “dead” numbers that don’t say anything. Remember, the whole point was to discover a space for improvement. On the other hand, a positive image might emerge at the end of the process, and you should not forget to celebrate it with a thank you note to your staff.