Make It Easy for Patients to Provide Feedback on the Care You Provide

Really knowing what patients thought of the care you provided can equate to a priceless opportunity to both see where your urgent care center can improve and understand how to tailor your marketing message. The problem, according to a new article published in BMJ Quality & Safety, is that too many patients are reluctant to give you an honest assessment. Out of 10,212 patient–participants, 47% admitted they experienced a problem during a recent hospital stay. Around a third of them said they didn’t feel comfortable speaking up about it. Significantly, the patients least likely to tell the hospital about whatever problem they experienced were least likely to recommend the hospital, as well. Predictors of which patients were not likely to share their negative experience with the hospital included those who did not speak English at home, and those who gave low scores on nurses’ level of communication and on physicians’ levels of communication. As such, “creating conditions for patients to be comfortable speaking up may result in service recovery opportunities and improved patient experience,” the authors concluded. In the urgent care context, that means 1) developing an awareness of any language barriers among your patient population and taking steps to ensure staff is available to facilitate good communication and 2) stressing to clinical staff that basic communication with patients affects their perception of the care they received. If you do get “negative” feedback, view it as an opportunity to fix any potential problems. JUCM looked at a related issue in Calculating the Value of a Like: The Muddled ROI of Facebook Advertising, currently available in our archive. Read it to gain some insights into how best to collect and leverage the feedback you receive.