Doctor Visit Follow-Up Surveys

Continuing with our recent blog posts about uncommon uses of surveys, one that many people likely wish was initiated more often is the idea of a follow up survey to a doctor's visit. This is something that patients have been quietly asking for years, but few medical professionals actually use – some type of survey based follow up so that the patients and doctors can stay connected, and make sure that any medications or concerns were taken care of.

Any follow up medical survey would be easy to implement. All doctor's offices keep records of their patients, and if the patient knows that the doctor will use their email to follow up with the appointment, they'll almost always provide it. Then, once their visit has been logged, the survey can be sent out automatically 3 to 7 days later, depending on what works best for the physician.

It can contain questions about medication success, boxes for any further questions or worries, satisfaction scores, and so on. It's easy for it to be either a standard survey or one that shows specific questions based on what's been reviewed, using the SurveyMethods platform.

Patients everywhere would probably love this type of survey, provided it received a doctor's follow up. Through this survey, a patient can ask any questions they forgot, they can tell the doctor if the medication has been working or if they believe there are any side effects, they can let the doctor know if they're healing and so on. Patients and doctors do not nearly follow up with each other as often as they should, because of insurance issues, difficulty in taking time off work, general doctor avoidance, etc.

This would give the patient an "out" so that they would be able to get the answers they need and be notified if they should come back in for another visit. Of course, we know why patients would want this type of survey – it gives them an opportunity to follow up with a brief doctor's visit. The question is why this survey would benefit doctors, and why they would want to put in the extra work.

Luckily, there are several reasons that doctors can benefit from this type of survey as well. We will discuss these potential benefits in the next article.