Use Patient Satisfaction Surveys to Drive Loyalty & Improve Healthcare

What if the key to your healthcare practice's growth lies in the unheard voice of your patients?

To truly hear them, you must conduct patient satisfaction surveys that ask the right questions and uncover their needs and expectations.

Every patient interaction is an opportunity—to strengthen your reputation or risk damaging it. Interestingly, 68% of satisfied patients recommend their healthcare providers to others needing treatment. Conversely, dissatisfied patients can spread negative feedback, impacting your reputation and business.

Patient satisfaction surveys are your gateway to capturing honest, actionable feedback. By implementing well-crafted surveys at optimal times, you gain deep insights into every aspect of the patient experience—from appointment scheduling to post-care follow-ups. This valuable information empowers you to make informed improvements, fostering patient loyalty and trust.

In this blog, we'll delve into the patient satisfaction surveys in-depth including their different types, the tangible benefits they bring, and how to effectively integrate them into your practice.

Let's get started.

TL;DR

• Patient satisfaction is a measure of how happy patients are with their experiences at hospitals, clinics, or healthcare organizations. A patient satisfaction survey helps to assess this satisfaction.
• There are two types of patients: inpatients and outpatients. Questions are the core of any survey, so select your patient satisfaction questions wisely for both groups. Surveys can be shared through various channels: QR code, website, email, SMS, offline, and in-app surveys.
• Patient satisfaction surveys build a loyal patient base, track staff performance, attract new patients, and minimize litigation risks.
• To enhance patient experience and satisfaction, ensure smooth processes, reduce wait times, maintain cleanliness and hygiene, facilitate quality interactions with medical personnel, and avoid unnecessary costs for patients.
• Follow best practices for creating effective surveys: keep them short and unbiased, use survey logic and metrics like CSAT & NPS, respond to every feedback, and use a reliable feedback tool.
• Zonka Feedback is an effective patient feedback system that creates powerful surveys. You can try it for free for 14 days or schedule a demo to see its benefits for your healthcare business.

Measure Patient Satisfaction & Insights

Leverage Zonka Feedback's Patient Feedback surveys to uncover patient expectations and improve care experiences.

What is Patient Satisfaction? 

Patient satisfaction measures how happy and content patients are with their healthcare experience. It comprises factors such as quality of care received, communication with healthcare providers or doctors, access to services, and overall hospital or clinic experience.

Patient experiences at all touchpoints directly impact satisfaction levels. These touchpoints include:

• appointment booking
• waiting
• doctor’s interaction
• hospital staff interaction
• bill payment, etc. 

This is where you can launch a patient satisfaction survey.

What are Patient Satisfaction Surveys?

A patient satisfaction survey is a structured questionnaire that is used by healthcare businesses to gain insights from patients and measure the overall satisfaction of the patients or their family members with each aspect.

There are two types of patient surveys. Let's understand them here.

Two Types of Patient Satisfaction Surveys

Understanding and enhancing patient satisfaction is crucial for any healthcare provider aiming to deliver exceptional care. The type of patient satisfaction questionnaire you choose to gauge patient satisfaction can significantly influence the quality and depth of feedback you receive. Selecting the appropriate survey type depends on the kind of healthcare institution be it a hospital, clinic, aged care facility, or pharmacy; and the specific touchpoint at which feedback is collected.

Broadly, patient satisfaction surveys can be categorized into two main types:

1. Inpatient Satisfaction Surveys

Inpatients are individuals who are admitted to hospitals or healthcare organizations and receive medical treatment, care, or other medical facilities and services while staying overnight or for an extended period.

To gather their feedback and overall patient satisfaction, you can launch inpatient surveys. These surveys reveal their experience with the treatment, care, and related healthcare services at the hospital.

In the inpatient experience surveys like hospital surveys, patient satisfaction questions are asked about various aspects like:

• Registration and admission process
• Treatment and medical care
• Cleanliness of the rooms
• Frequency of the doctors’ visit
• Behavior of the medical staff
• On-premises facilities like pharmacy, laboratories, and quality of meals
• Billing and payment process
• Discharge process

2. Outpatient Satisfaction Surveys

Outpatients are those individuals who receive medical consultations, treatment, and related services at a clinic or hospital without staying overnight. They visit the healthcare facility for treatment and return home on the same day.

Outpatient surveys are used for gathering feedback and measuring patient satisfaction of the outpatients with their experience of getting consultations, diagnoses, treatment processes, and related services.

In outpatient experience surveys, such as clinic or hospital surveys, the following aspects are typically covered in patient satisfaction questions:

• Appointment booking experience
• Waiting time for the appointment
• Interaction with the physician
• Doctors’ knowledge and diagnosis of the ailment correctly
• Availability of pharmacy and lab test services
• Satisfaction with the charges or fees
• Accessibility of the location of the clinic
• Comfort at the waiting room
• Cleanliness of the clinical surroundings

Patient satisfaction surveys are crucial for enhancing overall healthcare quality. These surveys should be conducted at key touchpoints in the patient journey across various healthcare settings such as hospitals, clinics, aged care facilities, and pharmacies.

Here are some crucial touchpoints and the respective surveys that you can use at those touchpoints to measure patient satisfaction in different types of healthcare institutions.

Patient Satisfaction Surveys for Hospitals and Clinics

Hospital care satisfaction surveys in hospitals and clinics play a vital role in improving care quality and patient satisfaction. By surveying patients at different stages, healthcare providers can pinpoint areas for improvement and ensure a positive experience.

For Inpatients

Surveys for inpatients, such as the hospital consumer assessment, help refine the overall patient experience and ensure that the hospital meets their needs effectively. These surveys for key touchpoints include:

• Admission Process Feedback Survey: Trigger surveys shortly after admission to gather insights on the patient’s and their family’s experiences with the admission process. This helps identify any challenges, such as long wait times or complicated procedures.

• Medical Tests Experience Survey: Survey patients about their experiences with medical tests. This includes assessing the appropriateness of the tests, staff support, test costs, and the timely delivery of test results.

• Hospital Stay and Treatment Feedback Survey: Collect feedback on the overall inpatient experience, including hospital cleanliness, staff conduct, food quality, interactions with doctors, the accuracy of diagnoses, and general satisfaction with treatment.

• Discharge Process Feedback Survey: Administer surveys during or just after the discharge process to understand patient and family experiences. Focus on the complexity of the discharge procedures, the time taken, billing processes, and support with medical insurance claims.

• Post-Discharge Follow-Up Experience Survey: Survey patients after discharge to evaluate their experiences with follow-up consultations and ongoing care from their healthcare providers.

For Outpatients

Surveys for outpatients are essential for enhancing service quality and ensuring smooth and efficient visits. Important touchpoints include:

• Appointment Booking Experience Survey: Survey patients on the appointment booking process, evaluating the availability of convenient times, ease of use of the booking system, and responsiveness of the staff.

• Post Check-In Survey: Trigger post-check-in surveys to collect feedback on the check-in process, including wait times, the efficiency of reception staff, and the clarity of information provided during check-in.

• Doctor Feedback Survey: Survey patients about their consultation experience, focusing on the clarity of the doctor’s communication, thoroughness of the examination, and any follow-up care instructions.

Patient Satisfaction Surveys for Aged Care

Surveys in aged care facilities are essential for ensuring high-quality care and satisfaction among residents and their families. Key surveys for different touchpoints include:

• Admission Process Experience Survey: Administer surveys to new residents and their families to understand their experiences with the admission process and identify any areas for improvement.

• Daily Care Activities Feedback Survey: Survey the residents to collect feedback on daily care activities to ensure residents are happy with the care they receive, staff attentiveness, and the availability of recreational activities.

• Health Assessment Survey: Survey residents and their families on the thoroughness of health assessments and the clarity of communication regarding health information.

• Family or Visitor Feedback Survey: Send surveys to gather feedback from family members and visitors to understand their views on the quality of care and their satisfaction with the facility's environment and policies.

• Staff Feedback Survey: Survey staff to identify areas for improvement in their working conditions, training needs, understanding of residents' requirements, and overall job satisfaction, which can indirectly affect the quality of care.

• Post-Discharge Survey: Send surveys just after discharge to collect feedback on the discharge process to ensure it is smooth, efficient, and well-supported by the staff.

Patient Satisfaction Surveys for Pharmacies

Surveys in pharmacies are crucial for improving service quality and ensuring patient satisfaction. Key surveys for various touchpoints include:

• Prescription Fulfillment Satisfaction Survey: Survey patients on their experiences with prescription fulfillment, including accuracy, wait times, and the professionalism of pharmacy staff.

• Medication Consultations Experience Survey: Share surveys to gather feedback on medication consultations to understand patient satisfaction with the advice provided by pharmacists, including the clarity and helpfulness of the information.

• Purchase Experience Survey: Administer surveys on the purchasing process to ensure it is efficient, with minimal wait times, and that the staff is courteous and helpful.

• Billing Experience Survey: Trigger surveys just after billing to collect feedback on the billing process to identify any issues with billing accuracy, clarity of statements, and ease of processing payments or insurance claims.

Benefits of Using Patient Satisfaction Surveys

Patient experience surveys are important in terms of collecting patient insights, ensuring satisfaction, and attracting new patients to your hospital or clinic. A publicly reported survey, such as the HCAHPS survey, plays a crucial role in creating a transparent framework for benchmarking hospital performance across regions, incentivizing hospitals to improve the quality of care provided to patients.

The following are its benefits:

• Higher Loyalty among patients - Healthcare is a competitive industry because patients nowadays are smarter and more aware than before. Asking patient perspectives and taking actions to enhance satisfaction boosts patient retention and loyalty, and they choose you again whenever they need you.

• Way to keep track of your staff performance - Patient feedback surveys enable you to track the performance of your healthcare staff be it doctors, nurses, ward boys, facilities, or any other staff.

• Attracting new patients - Patients share their experiences in the form of word of mouth and online reviews. Researches suggest that more than 70% of patients look for online reviews before trying new doctors or healthcare providers. Patient satisfaction surveys help you to build satisfying patient experiences thereby creating good reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations for you which attracts new patients to your healthcare business.

• Minimizing the risk of litigation - Negative medical outcomes may lead to legal actions against your doctors, hospital, or clinic. However, by leveraging feedback surveys, you can ensure better healthcare delivery for your patients. If you make the best efforts to treat the patient and provide patients with a great experience, it minimizes the risk of such legal actions.

With that, let’s explore the different channels you can use to share surveys.

Channels to Share Patient Surveys at Different Touchpoints

When it comes to sharing surveys, it is good to use multiple channels to cover the maximum of your patients perspectives at various touchpoints to collect their valuable feedback and make better decisions for your healthcare organization. Here are the channels that you can use at the right touchpoints. 

1. Offline surveys: Capture Patient Feedback Onsite

How do healthcare facilities ensure patient satisfaction at every step?

The secret lies in offline surveys. These surveys are strategically placed in reception areas, patient rooms, and waiting rooms, inviting patients to share their experiences effortlessly. By using a reliable survey app, healthcare providers collect feedback even without internet access, ensuring data is stored securely and synced later.

Whether in remote clinics or busy hospitals, feedback is gathered using devices like iPads and Android tablets, maintaining compliance with health insurance portability standards. This approach helps improve patient satisfaction and ensures a positive healthcare experience for all.

2. Maximize Patient Satisfaction Through Targeted Email Surveys

Email surveys provide a versatile tool for gathering feedback post-appointment or post-discharge. You can send these surveys after a visit or treatment to get timely insights into patient experiences. There are two main types:

• Embedded Email Surveys: The first question appears directly in the email body, encouraging immediate responses.

• Email Signature Surveys: A survey link is integrated into routine communication emails (e.g., medical reports or receipts), making it easy for patients to provide feedback spontaneously.

These methods help you capture patient satisfaction in a non-intrusive and convenient manner.

3. SMS Surveys: Gather Feedback on Fingertips

Do you want to instantly capture patient feedback right after their visit or treatment? SMS surveys are an incredibly effective way to do just that!

By sending a simple text message with a survey link immediately after an interaction—like a consultation or service—you can effortlessly gather valuable insights from your patients. This method ensures a high response rate, as patients can quickly open the survey link and submit their responses on-the-go. With a reliable feedback tool, you can trigger SMS surveys at various touchpoints, making it a seamless part of your patient satisfaction strategy.

4. QR Code Surveys: Easy Patient Feedback Collection

Your patients can now share their feedback anytime, effortlessly. With a simple scan of a QR code placed right in their room, they can access a satisfaction survey directly from their smartphone. This seamless process empowers them to provide valuable insights at their convenience. Their feedback plays a crucial role in enhancing the quality of care and elevating the overall patient experience, helping your healthcare facility become more responsive, patient-centered, and dedicated to continuous improvement.

5. Engage Patients with WhatsApp Surveys

WhatsApp surveys have emerged as an effective tool to engage with patients, especially in regions where WhatsApp is commonly used for communication. This channel allows healthcare providers to send short, easy-to-complete surveys directly to patients via WhatsApp.

You can use text-based surveys or include links to survey forms, making it simple for patients to provide feedback at their convenience. Given the popularity of WhatsApp, this method ensures high engagement and response rates, allowing healthcare organizations to collect valuable patient insights in real-time.

6. Collect Valuable Patient Feedback via Website Surveys

Website surveys are perfect for gathering patient insights during appointment booking or when patients are browsing your healthcare services. You can enhance these surveys with interactive feedback widgets such as:

• Popup surveys: Appear in the center of a webpage during specific user actions, prompting immediate feedback.
• Slide-up surveys and Bottom bar surveys: These surveys slide in from the side or bottom of the page, inviting users to participate without interrupting their browsing experience.
• Feedback buttons: Small tabs labeled 'Feedback' appear on the page and allow patients to submit their thoughts.

These tools ensure efficient feedback collection while maintaining a smooth user experience.

7. Collect Actionable Insights via In-App Surveys

For healthcare facilities with mobile applications, In-app surveys are an excellent way to gather patient feedback. These surveys can be integrated directly into the app to measure patient satisfaction after various touchpoints, such as:

• Booking appointment
• Accessing medical reports
• Receiving personalized healthcare information or advice

In-app surveys make it easy to capture insights in real-time, providing valuable data to improve your healthcare services.

Let’s explore some patient survey examples to better understand what a patient survey looks like.

Some Patient Satisfaction Survey Examples

Here are some sample surveys that can be used to measure patients' happiness and evaluate their experiences. You can use these patient satisfaction examples as direct templates or you can modify them as per your survey needs.

1. Post-Consultation Survey for Hospital (for both inpatients and outpatients)

This survey template is a sample survey for hospitals and can be sent to the patients after they have visited or consulted the doctor in the hospital. A survey like this will help healthcare providers gauge patients' satisfaction with respect to the interactions they just had.

You can use the healthcare patient satisfaction survey template here: 

2. Post-Visit Survey Template for clinics or other healthcare facility (for Outpatients)

This detailed patient satisfaction survey template is the perfect patient survey example designed for clinics to collect feedback from outpatients about their entire visit to the clinic or healthcare center and all interactions. This patient satisfaction survey questionnaire will help you gather feedback about your healthcare facility and its processes.

3. Patient Feedback about Doctor Survey 

Patient feedback about doctor survey templates can be used to gauge feedback about patient interaction and experience with the doctor can be an invaluable tool for healthcare providers. This patient satisfaction survey template can cover a wide range of aspects related to the patient-doctor interaction.

For example, in a sample patient satisfaction survey, you can ask patients to rate the doctor's communication skills, bedside manner, and the extent to which their concerns were addressed. Additionally, the survey can inquire about the patient's overall satisfaction with the doctor's expertise, knowledge, and treatment recommendations.

Let’s explore some patient survey questions that you can use to gauge patient experience.

Top 20 Patient Satisfaction Survey Questions

Effective questions are the core of any survey when it comes to collecting patient insights. So we have worked and made three categories of questions to help you choose the appropriate ones as per your survey needs.

1. Patient Satisfaction Questions to Gauge Experience with Medical Treatment and Care

The purpose of these patient survey questions is to conduct a quality assessment of patient care and doctor’s treatment provided at your hospital or clinic and how satisfied are patients with it. These questions can be commonly used for inpatients as well as outpatients.

1. How would you rate the overall care and quality of treatment provided at the hospital/clinic?
2. How would you rate the knowledge of the doctor?
3. How would you rate the diagnosis of the ailments done by the physician?
4. How well did the medical team keep you informed about the progress of your treatment?
5. Were the treatment and care processes completed without unnecessary delays?

2. Patient Feedback Questions for Outpatients

Outpatient feedback can be on various aspects of healthcare like the staff’s helpfulness, the waiting duration before the appointment, ease of booking an appointment, doctor’s knowledge, availability of pharmacy and lab test services, etc.

These questions are mainly to gather feedback from outpatients.

1. How would you rate your appointment booking experience?
2. How would you rate the accessibility of our facility in terms of location?
3. How would you rate the knowledge and diagnosis of our doctor?
4. How satisfied are you with the treatment?
5. How would you rate the affordability of medical care provided by us?

3. Survey Questions for Inpatient Feedback

Inpatient surveys are one of the key health survey questions that can be used to measure inpatient satisfaction in terms of not just treatment but also the patient’s stay in the hospital during the treatment. In cases of inpatient treatment, factors like the cleanliness of rooms, the technology used, frequency of doctors’ visits, on-premises facilities like pharmacies and laboratories, quality of meals, etc., can influence the patient experience.

You can include these hospital survey questions in a post-discharge survey to gauge the patients’ overall experience.

1. How would you rate the admission process of our hospital?
2. How satisfied are you with the attentiveness of the nursing staff?
3. How would you rate our operating rooms/patient wards?
4. How satisfied are you with the quality of care during the transition from hospital to home/another facility?
5. How would you rate the overall hospital environment? 

4. Facility Feedback Patient Satisfaction Survey

A facility feedback survey has to be one of the most important healthcare surveys because facility and infrastructure play a huge role in patients choosing your services. An unkempt building with a lack of on-site facilities can be no good since people rarely compromise when it comes to health.

Here are the top healthcare feedback questions that you can include in this survey:

1. How would you rate the cleanliness and hygiene of our facility?
2. How comfortable is the seating arrangement in the waiting room?
3. How satisfied are you with the quality and variety of food available in the cafeteria?
4. How would you rate the accessibility and convenience of our facility's location?
5. How would you assess the availability and functionality of our on-site facilities, such as pharmacies and laboratories?

How to Improve Patient Satisfaction?

If you want to make sure that the patients in your hospital or clinic are satisfied with your services, you have to take an active part in safeguarding the interests of the patients and providing them with world-class services.

Here are some best practices that can help you in improving patient satisfaction and happiness at your hospital or clinic.

• Make your processes easier and simpler: As the patients are already struggling with their health issues, the first step should be to save them from complex and lengthy procedures. Be it appointment booking, admission, medicine purchasing, hospital bill payment, or assistance to get health insurance claims; ensure that all processes are simple and smooth for them. 
• Reduce waiting time: Long waiting times can ruin a major part of the patient experience. Therefore, ensure patients are given appropriate and most accurate timings of appointment so that they don’t have to wait for long. If you have a high number of patients, hire more doctors and other medical staff.
• Improve quality of doctor-patient interactions: Make sure that the doctors are not only good in terms of swift diagnosis, treatment, and quality health care but they are also caring and compassionate towards the patients so patients feel good and recover speedily.
• Keep highly trained staff: Make sure that the hospital or clinic staff you have is well trained and decent in terms of behavior along with their responsibilities of providing a patient-centered care.
• Ensure cleanliness of the premises: All areas of your premises must be hygienic and clean be it the waiting area, doctor’s cabin, cafeteria, or washrooms. Ensure that your facility doesn't have a foul smell and take appropriate measures like sanitizers to avoid the spread of infections.
• Avoid burdening your patients with unnecessary costs: Avoid overburdening your patients with unnecessary blood tests, x-rays, ultrasounds, etc. Ensure that your doctors’ diagnoses are good and accurate and follow the best practices of doing healthcare business.
• Collect feedback and take action on it: Always collect patient insights to let them know that you care about how patients feel, their opinions, and experiences, and timely action on feedback to ensure quality improvement and avoid any negative experiences in the future. Collecting feedback and measuring patients' perceptions shows that you are dedicated to providing patient-centered care.
• Use satisfaction metrics: Implement satisfaction metrics like CSAT, NPS, and CES for quantitative data on patient happiness. Choosing the best NPS software can significantly enhance your ability to gather and analyze this data effectively, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of patient satisfaction.

Let’s learn how you can create effective patient satisfaction questionnaires with Zonka Feedback.

How to Conduct Patient Surveys with Zonka Feedback?

You can easily create powerful patient feedback surveys within minutes with Zonka Feedback.

Step 1: Sign Up and Access the Survey Builder

Sign up on Zonka Feedback. Go to the Survey Builder, where you’ll find a variety of options to create and customize your patient feedback surveys.

Step 2: Choose a Healthcare Survey Template

In the Survey Builder, go to the Healthcare section to explore pre-designed survey templates. Choose one that matches your needs, such as inpatient surveys, outpatient surveys, health risk assessments, or patient registration forms. These templates are fully customizable, so you can adapt them to suit your specific requirements.

Step 3: Customize Your Survey

Personalize your chosen template by adding or modifying questions to fit your objectives. You can select from over 30 question types and customize the survey’s design by choosing themes, colors, and language. Whitelabel the survey to include your branding, such as your logo and other custom elements, to maintain consistency and professionalism.

Step 4: Add Advanced Features

Enhance your survey using Zonka Feedback’s advanced features. Incorporate skip logic and question branching to make the survey dynamic and engaging for patients. Use answer piping to tailor questions based on previous responses, and add prefilled patient data such as names or ages to create a more seamless experience.

Step 5: Share Surveys Through Multiple Channels

Deploy your survey across various channels to reach patients effectively. You can use kiosks, tablets, or smartphones for on-premise feedback or distribute the survey online via email, SMS, or website widgets. This ensures accessibility for both in-hospital and remote patients.

Step 6: Monitor Real-Time Responses

Once the survey is live, monitor responses in real time. Zonka Feedback provides detailed reports, including metrics like the Net Promoter Score and patient satisfaction score. These insights help you analyze feedback and identify trends for improving patient experiences.

Step 7: Take Action on Feedback

Act promptly on the feedback collected. Zonka Feedback’s real-time alerts ensure you can address issues as they arise. Use the insights to make informed decisions that enhance patient care, improve satisfaction, and close the feedback loop effectively.

Following these steps will enable you to conduct seamless patient surveys and use the insights to transform your healthcare services.

Leverage Zonka Feedback to Set up an Effective Patient Feedback System

Exceptional patient care begins with truly understanding your patients' experiences. Zonka Feedback offers a powerful, user-friendly solution for healthcare providers to establish an efficient patient feedback system. Whether for hospitals, clinics, aged care facilities, or pharmacies, its robust features and intuitive design enable seamless feedback collection at every stage of the patient journey.

With Zonka Feedback, you can gather meaningful insights that drive continuous improvement. By listening to your patients and acting on their feedback, you can boost patient satisfaction, enhance loyalty, improve staff performance, and attract new patients. Experience the difference with Zonka Feedback—try it free for 14 days and take the first step toward transforming your healthcare practice.