ing. It shows there's effort being put into making patients as comfort-
able as possible and gives the facility credibility in patients' eyes."
Just seeing that a leader from the department is interested in taking
the time to introduce themselves and make sure everything is OK is
incredibly reassuring, according to Mr. Lantos. "As leaders, supervi-
sors and managers, we are all pressed for time every day," he says,
"but spending just a few minutes with patients can make a powerful
impact."
4. Look for trends
Mr. Lantos, who tracked the results of 465 patient satisfaction surveys
collected throughout 2017 in the endoscopy department of his hospi-
tal, says survey results reflect the true feelings and opinions of your
patients. "We have an online portal we use to access the surveys,"
says Mr. Lantos. "We look at each question and see which ones have
the lowest scores and the reasons for the low rating."
He suggests paying attention to each response and focusing on
addressing specific areas of dissatisfaction. He took the analysis one
step further by analyzing satisfaction scores based on patients' age,
gender, race, procedure time, history of endoscopic procedures and
whether a departmental leader had met with them during their stay.
His goal was to identify patients who were statistically more likely to
return a poor survey. For example, he found satisfaction scores were
high at the beginning of the day and began to decrease around 11 a.m.,
which makes sense because patients have to remain NPO as they wait
all morning for their procedures to begin.
That finding was unique to Mr. Lantos's facility, but the lesson is uni-
versal: Scratch beneath the surface of survey responses to look for
common trends, and take steps to address them.
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