beat patient survey fatigue hero image

Beat patient survey fatigue

Thanks to mandates, most hospitals use the HCAHPS survey. Vendors such as Press Ganey and NRC help hospitals with HCAHPS and other performance benchmarks.

Products such as Press Ganey's PGFusion and NRC's Health Solutions are working on innovative ways to solve a crucial problem - patient survey response rates are down eight points in the last ten years from 33% (2009) to 25% (2019).

HCAHPS response rates are down 8 points in ten years.

Hope Brown points out in Does Response Rate Impact HCAHPS Scores, an eight-point decline does matter. As Brown notes, "For every 1 point increase in response rate a hospital achieves, the hospital could expect to see an increase of .501 in their Overall Rating score." (emphasis hers) Considering how much time, money, and resources hospitals invest in improving scores, patient response rates are a critical success factor.

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Survey Fatigue

Dave Cummings, VP Care Support for Prospero Health, wrote about survey fatigue on LinkedIn:

Customer satisfaction surveys are maddening. Who has the time to comment on their restaurant server, local grocer, or airline? It never ends. I am usually happy with all of the above but am rarely motivated to complete their surveys, especially when survey requests are in my email. Who has the time? Perhaps I would respond to a single question or two.

Many providers and systems are concerned about the low number of survey responses. The question is how to engage patients enough so they complete a survey after a positive experience. Patients and families expect excellent healthcare experiences, so they may be more motivated to respond to a survey after a less than stellar experience. 

Survey fatigue is a confusing topic, but it's an important issue to address. Press Ganey, NRC, and others are working on innovations such as reducing and randomizing survey questions, providing real-time feedback loops, and using mobile technology. Our innovation is simplicity. Get out of the way and let patients share their stories. As we noted in Love As A Metric it's hard to survey love.

Listen More Survey Less

When are your patients asked to share their stories? Unfortunately, it has been unusual to share stories with an institution. Now, PatientsVoices’ algorithms transform patient stories into process change priorities.

Asking patients to share stories changes the dynamic. Patients receive just two questions – describe and rate your experience. We collect real-time feedback using mobile tech, process their feedback with proprietary algorithms, and share results in real-time reporting dashboards.

So the best way to reduce survey fatigue and improve ratings is to listen more, survey less, and use PatientsVoices to create change aligned with what matters most to your patients.

Question

How is your hospital or care group beating survey fatigue?

email - maryk.oconnor (at)patientsvoices.net