Part II from Oct 2005. Just as relevant today.
My last post attempted to discredit the patient satisfaction survey process that many physical therapy clinics have in place. My belief is simply that the incremental gains from the analysis of your surveys will not tell you much more than what we know from the published research (some of which I posted) and the effort does not justify such gains. I have heard from many of you (mostly by email) similar responses-you are appalled by my suggestion not to do them. You have cited that many regulatory bodies (e.g. hospital systems, networks, insurance products) force you to collect such data and that you have gotten a lot out of them (of note, I did not get any specific and helpful information that you “got out of them”). For many of you the process is so ingrained that “letting go” would be sacreligious! Although my next post will present a very different concept of patient measurement, I felt it necessary to bring to light two distinct points.
The first is that there is a significant difference between patient satisfaction surveys and obtaining patient feedback. Often times, both are co-mingled in one survey and that can work fine as long as the number of “scored” questions is minimal (you should always avoid an “overall” question such as “overall are you satisfied with therapy” because there is evidence that this “clouds” the overall construct of patients satisfaction-again, I personally think you should totally avoid the notion of satisfaction as well!). Patient feedback questions such as “Please tell us one thing that we could have done that would have enhanced your experience” or “What was the most memorable experience that you had in our clinic?” or “why will you be referring friends and family members to this clinic?” are extremely powerful and will force enlightened clinics to make changes. However, this is feedback information and not satisfaction studies.
The second point is in terms of measurement. Just because patient satisfaction is easy to measure does not mean it is valuable. A recent story I read in The Big Moo illustrates this extremely well. According to Car and Driver Magazine, there is no comparison between a 2005 Corvette and a Porsche 911. The Corvette is faster from zero to sixty, faster in the quarter mile, faster to stop, better on the skid pad, and cost approx 38% less than the Porsche. With these advantages, why were there 30,000 more Porsche’s sold than Corvette’s? It turns out that there is a hard to measure attribute called “path accuracy” and this attribute is critical. A Porsche goes where you put it and gives the driver a magical feeling of control.
Patient satisfaction is easy to measure but that doesn’t mean it is worthwhile, important to our patients, or differentiating. Patient feedback thru open ended responses, patient engagement and loyalty is much harder to measure but it can be done and is a far more important construct.
Thoughts?
Larry
