And The Survey Says!

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In my last post, I shared my experience after following Doug’s advice from “Slowing the Churn” to host a Christmas party for our patients. As if I don’t have enough to do already as a new practice owner, I simultaneously decided to conduct a patient feedback survey to understand how we can serve our patients better. Admittedly, I dragged my feet a bit more on rolling out the survey because it wasn’t quite as fun as throwing a party.  However, I am glad we did it because the results were reaffirming of our strengths and weaknesses.  

I’m not going to belabor the points about why I think every DPC owner should survey their patients –  again, Doug sufficiently addressed that in “Slowing the Churn”.  Instead, I want to share our practice’s experience conducting a patient-first survey nearly one year into our new practice.

As for the tool, I went with Survey Monkey because it was easy to use and other folks had good things to say about it.  I also chose it because my assistant is already familiar with it.  Pre-existing knowledge was arguably the most important reason to me because I knew I would avoid looking at the results and needed someone else to do it. 

What I liked about Survey Monkey: 

  • User-Friendly Interface: Intuitive design makes it easy to create surveys.
  • Wide Range of Templates: Easy-to-use industry-specific survey templates and standard questions to pick from.
  • Built-in Analysis and Reporting: Detailed reports with charts and graphs for easy data interpretation.

What I didn’t like about Survey Monkey:

  • The Price: The free plan has significant limitations (e.g., 10-question cap, limited responses). Paying for the “advanced” features can be expensive for small businesses.  I probably won’t use it again due to the price tag. 
  • Limited Everything With the Free Plan: Unable to export to excel, caps placed on survey respondents
  • It Was a little complicated at first: Some users find the advanced features and analytics tools overwhelming.

Alternatives to Consider:

  • Google Forms: Free, more straightforward, but less feature-rich.
  • Typeform: Known for its sleek design and conversational surveys.
  • JotForm: Great for form creation with conditional logic at lower costs.

Key Takeaways:

Our survey response rate was lower than I expected at about 30% of our patients/families. We tried to incentivize participation with a random drawing from survey respondents to get a free “Seeds of Health” (our practice) Yeti Coffee Mug. Next time, we will give more lead time and promote it more aggressively.  

Overall the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with a calculated Net Promotor Score of 87 according to the survey tool. Though excellent, the real growth comes from diving into the less-than-glowing feedback.  My assistant extracted all the input into a spreadsheet and put the “opportunities for improvement” in a separate tab.  Though there were only 4 respondents in this table, I still didn’t read them until writing this article.  (To be fair, my assistant summarized them for me a while ago and none of it came as a surprise.)  Prior to distributing the survey, I already felt that we needed to work on response time and communication.  Here were a couple of the respondents…

  • “Wishing for quicker responses to texts and email questions… prescriptions refills are great….love you and your staff. Super happy I have found you!”
  • “The text-based communication is a bit difficult. Sometimes, it can feel like sending a question into a void.  Generally, a response comes back after a while, but an immediate (even automated) acknowledgment that it has been received and setting an expectation for response tie would help smooth it out.  Am very thankful for the service.”

This feedback was the final push I needed to add an automated text response to our EMR, set expectations more clearly, and, in some cases, not to daily dally with my responses. Additionally, we identified an opportunity to improve care coordination with patients and outside referrals. Again, this was confirmation of a pain point we were already aware of.

Since implementing the automated text response on January 1st we have had two to three more calls a week than usual and they were appropriate – patients realizing that they may need something dealt with before the end of the day. It is still early yet, but we will continue to seek patient input and re-evaluate our processes as time goes on. 

Have you done a patient survey in your practice?  I love to hear about your experience and survey tool recommendations.

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About Angela Andrews, MD

Dr. Angela Andrews is a board-certified Internal Medicine and Pediatrics physician, health coach, wife, mom, and lifelong athlete. When not spending time with her family or caring for her patients, she is training for her next competition. Dr. Andrews graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Biomedical Engineering and worked at General Electric Healthcare Wisconsin for nearly five years before returning to her dream of becoming a doctor. She received her medical degree from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. She completed her Med-Peds residency at the Detroit Medical Center & Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit, MI. After 8 years in the system, Dr. Andrews opened Seeds of Health Direct Primary Care in Grand Rapids, MI in February 2014. Her personal journey with fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle medicine training was a key factor in her decision. She spent years trying to figure out how to incorporate this experience into a “standard” clinical practice, before finding a natural fit within Direct Primary Care. Dr. Andrews is passionate about helping patients address the root cause of their mental and physical conditions and guiding them to cultivate healthy habits around exercise, good nutrition, and mental well-being. Dr. Andrews lives in Byron Center, Michigan, with her husband and exercise companion, Joseph VanEss, their son, Myles, and her two bonus children, Griffen and Quinne. She engages in various fitness activities (CrossFit, running, swimming, yoga, and bodybuilding) and enjoys gardening, tackling projects around the house, and building things out of wood.