Don’t Waste Time with Paper Surveys, Go Online!

Obtaining feedback from hospital patients gives you an objective view on the level of care your healthcare professionals are providing and allows you to gather suggestions for improving hospital services and facilities. Traditional paper surveys consume more time and monetary funds than online surveys and may leave you with an insignificant response rate.

Cost is too high

Even if you only send out a patient satisfaction survey to a select group of patients, you’ll still need to pay for the cost of printing the survey, in addition to the cost of postage delivery and the cost of supplying postage paid return envelopes. A simple survey sent to 1,000 patients could potentially cost thousands of dollars.

With an online survey portal, you pay a flat fee for every patient who takes the survey and a modest set-up fee to the survey company. You have the ability to close the survey at any time, once you receive enough responses, which allows you to more closely control how much the hospital ends up spending.

Junk mail killer

With the amount of junk mail circulating in patients’ mailboxes, your survey may get overlooked and end up in the trash. Sending a survey invitation to a patient’s email gives you a greater chance at a response. Having to fill out a survey form and drop it into the mailbox may take more time than answering a quick ten question survey by email.

Another drawback to paper surveys is the time and effort involved with compiling and accurately reporting the responses of your patients. If a patient leaves a detailed comment on a questionnaire, someone is going to have to record the entire answer into an electronic format for future analysis purposes.

Online survey benefits

If you offer an online hospital satisfaction survey, patient responses are automatically recorded. An analysis program shows you trends among responses and allows you to create free form reports to present to upper-management personnel. There is no intermediary step between a patient responding and the ability to analyze response data, saving you time.

Using an online survey provider helps your hospital achieve a more environmentally-friendly image. Since no paper exchange takes place during the online survey process, you’re preventing hundreds of pounds of paper waste from circulating in your community.

Mike is writing for  www.patientsurvey.com where you can find more about how to improve patient satisfaction.