This article is sponsored by The Compliance Team. In this Voices interview, HME Business sits down with Sandy Canally, Founder and CEO, The Compliance Team, to talk about how effective patient satisfaction surveys can improve business operations and revenue. She breaks down the key criteria providers should look for when choosing a patient satisfaction tool, and she also maps out best practices for approaching patient surveys in the home medical equipment industry.
HME Business: What life and career experiences do you most draw from, in your role today?
Sandy Canally: My mother was so ill throughout my childhood that I basically became a caregiver at age nine. I was so focused on making sure my mother received the best care possible that I was sort of born into nursing. When I was young, I remember the joy I got from receiving my first toy nurse’s kit with fake nursing supplies, a nurse’s cap and a little outfit that I could put on and pretend I was a nurse. That started to map the way for me.
My role today goes hand in hand with my early exposure, which led me to become a nurse in a variety of settings. I specialized in oncology where I oversaw clinical protocols for the Cancer Institute. That role was all about compliance and ensuring the providers followed the protocol so that patients received the appropriate care.
What is TCT’s Provider Quality Measurement (PQM) tool, and how are providers leveraging it in today’s landscape?
The PQM tool is a value-added service provided to all our accredited Exemplary Providers® allowing them to survey and trend their patients’ satisfaction. It enables them to see how they’ve improved over specific periods and benchmark their results against aggregated results from other facilities.
We’ve collected more than 1.5 million data points since 1999. Back then providers would send in their quarterly surveys, primarily done on paper, and we would aggregate them. When we developed the technology and the PQM tool, all data was transferred to the new tool. The adoption of technology was good not only for us, but also for the provider because they no longer had to conduct surveys by hand. Through the portal providers can email surveys, send a link in a communication, or set up the survey on their own in-store kiosk. All data is captured in our proprietary PQM portal for providers to review, benchmark, and make improvements where necessary.
How can patient satisfaction surveys streamline business operations and drive revenue?
Our PQM tool is only as good as the quality of the surveys within it, so it’s critical the survey questions be focused and relevant. We have universal surveys built in, but providers can also create their own to highlight areas of focus that are important to their specializations and equipment delivered.
When it comes to revenue, patient satisfaction is critical for improvement and growth. That’s why the final question of our satisfaction survey asks participants if they were 100% satisfied with the service they received from the provider. Normally, people will answer a yes or no question without hesitation, but the percentage can help them remember something that could have improved their experience. And if they answer no, the survey provides an open-ended question at the end so they can explain further what they were dissatisfied with or what could have been better. This is an opportunity for the provider to level-up and identify those gaps, which gets back to day-to-day operations and driving revenue. Provider teams can bring these reports to referral sources to bolster their credibility, and more referrals mean more revenue.
What should providers look for when choosing a patient satisfaction tool?
#1. Simplicity. The survey experience should be clear, concise, and simple to yield the greatest response. #2. Digitization. Providers should choose a tool they can integrate with their existing platforms and meet their technology standards. #3. Customization. The survey tool should be flexible, allowing the provider to tailor questions to their specific services and customers. And lastly, #4. Benchmarking. Providers can benefit immensely from knowing where they stack up against their competitors in the industry.
Some larger organizations offer satisfaction surveys linked to the hospitals, but if the survey is not conducted at the point-of-care within a couple of days after treatment, providers are not going to get the results they want. We approach our surveys in a way that keeps the patient experience fresh in their minds so that the data providers receive is timely and accurate.
What are a few best practices providers can follow when conducting patient surveys? What information should they be asking their patients?
Not too long ago, the main method for gathering patient satisfaction data was picking up the phone and calling the patient to follow-up on their experience with the equipment. Do they understand how to use it? Did they receive all the paperwork with their rights and responsibilities? Did they have all their questions answered? And do they know who to contact if they run into trouble with the device?
Calling patients in a timely manner, within 72 hours of the initial setup is still a method used, and all those questions are very relevant, but now this can all be done electronically, with customized emails, survey links, and on-site kiosks, which makes it easy for both the patient and provider to stay connected and improve customer/provider interaction.
For DMEPOS (Durable Medical Equipment Prosthetics Orthotics Supplies) providers it’s required by CMS to survey their patients. What are some of the reasons you’ve found that providers don’t do surveys and how have you helped them overcome these obstacles?
CMS has quality standards requiring providers to document both satisfaction and complaints via surveys. One of the main reasons we’ve heard from providers for not conducting surveys, or at least on a consistent basis, is lack of time. But once they start using our PQM portal and the survey tool, they see how easy it is to use, requiring just a few minutes per patient to implement. Once the survey is returned, everything else – tabulating data, aggregating and benchmarking, generating reports, are all done automatically. It’s also important to assign an individual(s) the responsibility of implementing the surveys as part of their job. We have an in-house support team that person can call for set up or if they run into any problems. That’s how important we feel customer satisfaction survey implementation, review, and follow up is for a provider’s continued success.
Finish this sentence: “In the home medical equipment space, 2024 will be defined by…”
… returning to normal business practice again.
Editor’s note: This article has been edited for length and clarity.
Celebrating 30 years in business, The Compliance Team is a CMS-approved, nationally recognized accreditation organization offering a full suite of Pharmacy/DMEPOS Accreditation and Certification programs. For more information, visit www.thecomplianceteam.org or call 215.654.9110.
The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact [email protected].