What is Patient Satisfaction?
Why Use Patient Satisfaction?
Is Patient Satisfaction Right for You?
Case Study

What is Patient Satisfaction?
Patient Satisfaction Tracking Studies provide timely, actionable feedback about patients’ perceptions of an institutions’ health care services.  They are based on the reports of the people who matter most to health care providers and who can become the best advocates or detractors, depending on their experience.

If there is a problem, Management learns about it quickly, before it has had time to do too much damage to an organization’s reputation.  Patients’ reports also let you compare the quality of service among different units inside an organization - Management can reward those that are doing well, and direct your efforts to those that are not.  Since perceptions are tracked over time, you can see the results of the changes, and can learn what works and what doesn’t.

National Market Measures normally works with telephone interviews to obtain an accurate, representative sample of recent patients.  NMM’s methodologies exceed the requirements of JCAHO or NCQA, two accrediting organizations in the health care industry.

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Why Use Patient Satisfaction?

Ø      Growing Competition in the Health Care Industry – Paying patients are exercising more control over their health care options, individually or through their health care plans.  The future will belong to those who can respond to the new market realities, who can generate repeat business and goodwill through their responsiveness to their patients.

Ø      Patient Satisfaction Studies Become Self-Fulfilling – Once people in an organization learn performance is being measured, employees often raise their performance level.

Ø      Customization and Normative Comparisons – Aside from a small set of core questions, there is no standard set of questions providers must adapt to.  The questions we ask are customized to your needs.  Over time, Management may want to shift emphasis from one area to another, or deal with an unexpected issue.  The core questions allow you to compare your scores with other organizations if you choose to do so.  Currently, NMM has over 96,000 satisfaction interviews in its normative database -- about 52,000 are specifically from health care.

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Is Patient Satisfaction Right for You?
Patient Satisfaction Tracking Studies are used by health care organizations that aggressively pursue patient satisfaction as an institutional goal, particularly those who realize that the health care market is a changing competitive environment.

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Case Study
NMM works with institutions that are widely considered to be at the forefront of change in the health care industry.  NMM continuously interviews large, representative patient samples in many service areas including hospitals, clinics, primary care sites, hospice, home health, and emergency room.  Interviews are conducted in three languages (English, Spanish, Russian), and reporting identifies improvements, declines, and stable components of service.

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