Use of Daily Web-Based, Real-Time Feedback to Improve Patient and Family Experience

Real-time feedback is a growing trend in patient- and family experience (PFE) work as it allows for immediate service recovery, though it typically requires a significant investment of time and financial resources. We describe a partnership with our "edutainment" system to administer an automated daily experience question (the "Daily Pulse Measure [DPM]") that allowed targeted just-in-time responses to low scores with minimal administrative cost. Through a series of Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles guided by family feedback, the question was created and modified, and the use of the question spread to all hospital units. The response rate was 23%, similar to our Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey response rate of 24% during the study period. Though the DPM did not have a consistent impact on the results of the 2 PFE survey questions we evaluated, units with improved PFE scores after the DPM roll-out tended to have more robust service recovery than those with low scores.