Hospitals and other healthcare facilities have long tracked patient satisfaction, largely through a few third-party research companies. Generally, patients receive lengthy surveys by mail a few weeks after their hospital stay or are called on the telephone by surveyors. The research companies tally the results and provide results to hospital administrators, usually on a quarterly basis. The hospitals then use the numbers as a gauge to measure whats going well and to learn where improvements are needed.
Six years ago, The Doug Williams Group, a Miami-based performance improvement consulting firm specializing in customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and profitability improvement, came up with an innovative idea that ensures that patient satisfaction is not only monitored, but more importantly, is improved. The Realtime Patient Satisfaction SystemSM WilliamsGroups Realtime Patient Satisfaction SystemSM is more powerful than the methods used in most hospitals because it has all of the features that are needed to translate information into action and action drives improved patient satisfaction and financial success. These features include:- Short, customized surveys, which can be modified at any time, to probe into areas of special interest to each hospital. This ensures that the right issues are being worked on to eliminate problems and increase both patient and physician satisfaction.
- Detailed comments and improvement suggestions (solicited during brief telephone interviews by experienced WilliamsGroup surveyors) are summarized to provide actionable feedback from patients about hospital performance. This gives the hospital critical information to recognize and improve the performance of staff and physicians and improve processes.
- Large sample sizes, usually three times the number of patients polled by other companies, which enables statistical trending at the unit level. This provides measures and accountability to drive unit performance improvement on a consistent basis.
- Realtime patient satisfaction feedback (as often as daily for patients discharged the previous day) provided via customized, user-friendly reports that are distributed through the Internet. This gives hospital personnel the tools to respond immediately to problems to minimize negative impacts.
- Facilitated performance improvement working sessions (usually every two weeks) to review trends, develop improvement action plans, monitor progress, and celebrate successes. This provides the implementation support and focus to translate information into action.
Real Success, Real Profits
In just a few years, as administrators have realized the value of having such a system in place, a new, dramatic standard has been set for measuring and improving patient satisfaction. Among those who speak enthusiastically about the remarkable merits of the system is an early user of the system, Jude Torcia, an experienced hospital CEO who has run hospitals for HealthSouth, Hospital Corporation of America, Lifepoint, and Community Health Systems.
“In healthcare, improving patient satisfaction is crucial to hospital profitability,” says Torcia. To help improve my hospitals patient satisfaction scores, The Doug Williams Group designed and helped us implement a comprehensive improvement strategy that included the Realtime Patient Satisfaction SystemSM. The Realtime Patient Satisfaction SystemSM was superior to the system we were using at the time and was the key to our success.”
Specifically, Torcia noted the customized survey questions, the large sample sizes, and the implementation support that was provided by WilliamsGroup senior management consultants.
“Because of the tools and support we got from The Doug Williams Group,” says Torcia, “our patient satisfaction scores improved from 81 percent to 97 percent in just 12 months, with a corresponding profit improvement of over $750,000 per year.”
The Realtime Patient Satisfaction SystemSM continues to revolutionize how hospitals track and improve patient satisfaction. Because it works not only in hospitals, but in a diverse range of other medical facilities as well, the WilliamsGroup invites administrators from all types of facilities to explore the system, and the impact it can have on their patient satisfaction figures as well as on their bottom line. The Doug Williams Group is so confident that the system will get results, it provides its clients a very unique Full Satisfaction Promise; unless clients expectations are exceeded, all services are free.
