What do you do if patient satisfaction is low and you're a healthcare manager?

Understanding the reasons behind low patient satisfaction is paramount in improving healthcare services. This begins with comprehensive data collection, including feedback from surveys, complaint forms, and direct interactions. Analyzing this information unveils patterns that pinpoint specific areas needing attention, whether it's prolonged wait times, staff demeanor, or care quality. By identifying these concerns, healthcare providers can tailor their improvement strategies more effectively. Additionally, acknowledging positive feedback helps reinforce practices that are already successful, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and patient-centered care.

If patient satisfaction is low as a healthcare manager, it's crucial to address the issue promptly. Start by gathering feedback from patients through surveys or direct communication. Identify areas for improvement, such as wait times, communication, or facility cleanliness. Work closely with staff to implement changes and improve patient experience. Provide ongoing training and support to ensure staff members understand and meet patient needs. Regularly monitor patient feedback to track progress and make further adjustments as needed.

Understand the reasons of the low score. Sometimes it may be difficult to do it by yourself, especially if there’s a lack of qualitative data or open-ended questions in your survey. In that case it’s very useful that you conduct some interviews with a group representing patients to understand the reasons of the low score. Then engage the group of patients to understand what is important and meaningful for them, and act on it. Do not limit the feedback of your actions and their engagement to simply keeping them informed, but push it further to collaborative decision-making and even empowering them.

Look into both quantitative and qualitative feedback to see trends but you’ll gather more insights from the qualitative comments. You can then use the comments to have deeper conversations with patients to see how you can do better as well as how they feel about the care episodes.

I have found success in bringing the team into the conversation to acknowledge patient experience issues and work together through the problem solving stages. Our patient-facing employees hear the complaints or feel the inefficiencies in processes that lead to patient complaints. If its hold times on the phone, wait times in the office, or billing questions following an encounter, the team is aware and can be critical in identifying the causes and solutions to the underlying issues. Bring everyone together in a staff meeting or lunch and work through the full patient experience from start to finishing to assure the highest level of success.

If patient satisfaction is low, I swiftly implement changes to enhance the patient experience. This involves assessing existing processes, identifying areas for improvement, and implementing targeted interventions. For instance, additional staff training on communication skills or a new feedback system could be introduced. Collaborating with frontline staff ensures tailored solutions to address specific patient concerns. Regularly monitoring progress allows for ongoing adjustments, ensuring sustained enhancements in patient experience.

I would seek feedback from patients to pinpoint the issues. Then conduct an internal analysis of work flow, adequate staffing, adequate distribution of expertise, and assess staff proficiency in providing the health service and patient care. One major issue I find impacting patient satisfaction is staff burnout, are we draining our staff? Are we overworking? Are workflows efficient enough to provide the service in a timely manner? Reduce wait times? Reduce overtime? it’s a lot of things, but knowing what is the problem helps us for a starting point