More Doctor Follow-Up Surveys

In the last article, we introduced the idea of a patient/doctor survey, where the doctor's office sends out a survey at a set time period after the doctor's visit so that the patient can tell the doctor if they have any questions, how successful the medication has worked, if they feel their needs were met, etc. Anyone that has ever been to a doctor's office likely wishes this type of survey took place. The question is why this would be beneficial for doctors, who likely would prefer to avoid the extra work.

Luckily, there are several reasons that doctors would find this to be to their advantage as well. These include: Liability Doctors make mistakes often. It's one of the reasons that their insurance premiums are so high.

If the doctor sends home a patient with a medicine that isn't working for them, and the patient doesn't know to come back, then they could be setting themselves up for some type of lawsuit. Satisfaction Understanding Doctors are still running a business. Ideally, they need to have satisfied customers in order to get better word of mouth marketing and increase their exposure.

Not only will surveys increase satisfaction on their own – they'll also let the doctor know if they're treating their patients in a way that will get them coming back. Moral Obligation Part of being a doctor is an obligation to a patient's health. Doctors, in many ways, have an obligation to try to make sure that their patients are recovering successfully, or that they had their questions answered, or that there is no reason to think that something else may be hurting their patients.

Surveys are a quick tool, and presumably it can help them solve problems without the need for an additional visit.

Integrating survey research into doctors’ offices seems like a no brainer, and the only thing that is likely stopping physicians from utilizing this type of method is knowledge of the method. There's very little harm or expense to running this type of survey, but the benefits are very clear, and both the patient and the physician stand to benefit greatly from this small amount of extra work. Any doctor or hospital administrator that is interested in utilizing this type of survey should contact SurveyMethods today. We'll show you how our software can easily be integrated into nearly any patient management system.