Shared on behalf of Bonnie Nicholas, Manager, Patient and Family Centred Care
Patient experience surveys are an important tool for our organization to hear the voices of our patients and community utilizing our services. It helps us understand what we are doing well and where we have opportunities to do things differently.
Technology practices and advances have made the traditional practice of sending patients a paper-based survey through the mail increasingly expensive and less attractive. Our previous patient experience survey provider, NRC Picker, discontinued services to Canadian organizations effective March 31, 2022. As such, Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC) has decided to move to Qualtric XM. They are a global leading Experience Management (XM) vendor that provides a digital platform for patient experience surveys (e.g., email, text messages, QR Code) that effectively and efficiently captures patients’ perceptions of their health care experience.
Electronic surveying is a method where the invitation to participate is sent via email or SMS using a URL link embedded in the email/message that allows the patient to go directly to the survey.
There are several advantages to adopting a digital method for patient experience surveys:
- Patients can receive the survey in a timely manner, potentially increasing response rate and TBRHSC can receive quicker results
- Portable, allowing the patients to complete anywhere, anytime
- Results are automatically uploaded into system and available real-time, enabling cause/effect analysis
What you need to know:
- The process for collecting email addresses/phone numbers in Meditech will be streamlined.
- Asking the patient if they would like to participate will still be a mandatory field, but email, phone and consent date will be saved to future visits to limit the data entry should the patient want to participate again.
- There will be upcoming education regarding the changes specific for registration points.