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Rethinking satisfaction surveys: time to next complaint
1Department of Health Systems Administration, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA. fa@georgetown.edu
Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety
|March 31, 2009
Summary
Patient complaints offer a cost-effective alternative to satisfaction surveys for healthcare performance insights. Analyzing complaint data, even when infrequent, can reveal critical operational issues for improvement teams.
Area of Science:
- Healthcare Management
- Quality Improvement
- Patient Experience Analysis
Background:
- Patient satisfaction surveys are resource-intensive.
- Patient complaints offer a more cost-effective data source.
- Existing analytical tools can process complaint data effectively.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the utility of patient complaints as a performance metric.
- To compare the cost-effectiveness of complaint data versus satisfaction surveys.
- To demonstrate how complaint analysis can drive quality improvement.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of patient complaint data from a medical/surgical unit.
- Utilizing time-between control charts for data analysis.
- Case study involving the analysis of 100 complaints over 50 days.
Main Results:
- Complaint data analysis can detect statistically significant changes in care processes.
- Unusual clusters of complaints (e.g., 3 consecutive days) signal deviations from the norm.
- Complaint data provide direct insights from dissatisfied patients, unfiltered by average satisfaction levels.
Conclusions:
- Patient complaints offer a valuable, low-cost method for monitoring healthcare quality.
- Complaint data provide a clearer voice of the customer compared to satisfaction surveys.
- Integrating complaint analysis with satisfaction rates offers comprehensive operational insights.
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