Routine patient surveys: Patients’ preferences and information gained by healthcare providers

Abstract

Background Patient feedback after contact with a hospital is regarded as an important source of information for the improvement of local healthcare services. Routine patient surveys are in widespread use to obtain such feedback. While general principles for the composition of this kind of surveys have been described in the literature, it is unknown which method of contact and topics of feedback are important to patients in postcontact healthcare surveys. Material and methods We invited 2931 consecutive patients who had in- or outpatient contact with the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology at the University Hospital Basel to an anonymous survey. They were asked whether they were generally in favor of feedback surveys. They also had the opportunity to state their preferred form of contact (text message, app, email, online or letter) and provide up to three topics that they regarded as specifically important in patient surveys. Results A total of 745 patients participated in the survey (25.4%), of these 61.9% expressed the preference to be surveyed, and 69.1% selected `letter’ as one of the preferred forms of contact. Favoring only `letter’ contact increased substantially with age. Overall 54.6% of patients stated at least one topic that they wished to give feedback on. The most frequent topics were related to treatment and rather general aspects regarding staff and overall impression. The wish to include suggestions for improvements was rarely mentioned as specific topic. Conclusions The majority of patients seem to be rather indifferent to the existence and content of patient surveys. They mention a wide range of topics from general to specific ones, but do not express interest in the opportunity to suggest changes. There is a need to effectively engage patients in healthcare planning using new approaches to obtain valuable feedback on patients’ hospital stay and contact experiences. These new approaches should ideally be more informative and cost-effective than the current practice.

Outpatients’ perception of their preoperative information regarding their health literacy skills and their preoperative anxiety level

“…Actually, despite the growing interest in Internet-based data collection in research, some patients rather use paper-based surveys, especially among older people aged 65 years and above, [ 67 ] which can lead to a nonresponse bias and a lower expected response rate. Besides, some patients may show poor interests in providing feedback, [ 67 ] unsure of the real impact of their answers on healthcare quality. Moreover, patients filling questionnaires sometimes care about giving answers making them “look good” [ 68 ] which is called the social-desirability bias.…”

The medical center preference of patients with head and neck cancer and factors that affect this preference

“…It was determined that patients needed patient-centered and basic health system based service. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate new approaches that provide potentially more meaningful results and better cost effectiveness (14).…”

Reporting Inpatients’ Experiences and Satisfaction in a National Psychiatric Facility: A Study Based on the Random Forest Algorithm

“…Patient satisfaction has been a subject of paramount importance and burgeoning attention to be promoted by patient-centered care practices ( 1 ), excellent healthcare management ( 2 , 3 ), and patient feedback-centric research ( 4 ). Because of its clear influence on positive patients’ behaviors and trust towards healthcare ( 5 , 6 ), many studies argue that measuring and monitoring patient satisfaction and feedback should be essential in health provision settings ( 7 , 8 ). This argument has been cited in research involving several healthcare specialties, emphasizing that patient satisfaction is a valid indicator of care provider and health system performance and quality ( 9 , 10 ).…”