Patient feedback is important for healthcare providers to understand how patients think about the service rendered. The captured feedback can be used for enhancing the quality of care and ultimately patient satisfaction. Further, the staff can use the data to implement the changes for ensuring patient safety.
How to Capture Patient Feedback?
Capturing patient feedback is the first step towards offering better patient experience. Although,we are living in the digital era, it would be surprising to know that a majority of hospitals still employ paper feedback forms for capturing feedback. Only a small portion of the hospitals employ patient feedback app to capture feedback.
The rapid advancements made in technology has brought tremendous changes in every walk of life. When it comes to medical field, the usage of mobile apps have been beneficial to both the doctors and patients. With patient feedback apps, patients love to give their feedback concerning various aspects of the hospital. It may be related to doctor and staff performance, facilities, ambiance and others. When compared to paper feedback forms, there would be higher response rates with customer feedback apps.
How does Patient Feedback System Capture Feedback?
The patient feedback system employs multiple modes and devices to capture feedback. They include Android tablets, iPads, Web surveys, and automated Kiosks. The software is highly customisable and facilitates to include questions as per the hospital needs. The software uses multiple metrics to capture feedback that include NPS, Single and multi-questionnaire, Open text, Feedback categories, reasons and more. You can also design intuitive patient satisfaction survey and send the feedback or survey links via Email and SMS to the patients. Hence, the patients can answer the survey in their desired time.
Role of Patient Feedback System in Improving National Health Service
To know how a patient feedback system improves National health service, we can consider the case studies of two hospital trusts; Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust and Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.
Case Study of Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust
Earlier, the trust happened to be one of the worst performing hospitals in the country. Now, it is one of the best hospitals in the town. The turnaround can be attributed to trust’s approach to patient feedback. The trust gives card to the patients by which they can respond online or they can fill a written survey. Also, the trust has partnered with feedback collecting websites such as patients opinion and NHS choices. The trust is also very active on twitter,and interacts with the patients. They have also appointed a patient experience committee. The trust has made several changes in various areas such as car parking, food and hospital care. Apart from improving services, feedback also serves to boost staff morale. The Surrey and Sussex Trust conducts “ Your Care Matters Survey ” and allows patients to figure out staff who did a good job. They then pass the comments to the relevant team members, which serve as a sort of motivation.
Case Study of Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
The Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust is another typical example of how effective patient feedback helps transform its services from being the worst to one of the best. The trust captures patient feedback by a number of modes that include paper and online surveys. It also runs an iPad project, wherein the patients are free to leave feedback in the form of audio messages, notes and video clips. Also, the trust has an official twitter account, and actively interacts with the patients.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it is clear that patient feedback does play a vital role in improving the National health service. In the business perspective, every hospital wishes to stay at the top in the healthcare industry. Unless a patient has a positive experience, he never visits the hospital. So, hospitals and healthcare systems must make use of patient feedback system to capture patient feedback all the time, resolve issues regularly to ensure patient satisfaction.
