Home health agencies struggle with surveys
Here are some tips for structuring good surveys
Home health agencies have not been measuring patient satisfaction as long as hospital systems, and many struggle with developing good survey instruments. Parkside Associates in Park Ridge, IL, has developed a tool, Home Healthcare Quality of Care Monitor, that uses language patients can easily understand and asks questions that will give agencies reliable and measurable responses.
The company offers home care agencies a few hints for improving patient satisfaction surveys:
• Ask questions that allow patients to rate the home care staff according to their expectations.
Here’s an example: "Did the staff arrive in a timely manner for home visits? Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often, Always." This type of question and choice of answers can prevent patients from feeling confused or limited in their responses.
• Don’t ask patients to rate staff’s technical skills.
Patient will have difficulty responding unless they have had technical training. Instead, ask, "Did the staff seem to know what they were doing?"
• Don’t use choices of "Very Poor, Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good."
Parkside’s research has shown that home health patients rate patient satisfaction more positively than patients in other types of health care. It’s important to give home health patients more positive choices to distinguish true excellence from good performance. A better set of responses would be "Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good, Excellent."
[Editor’s note: For more information, contact Jerry Seibert, MA, Parkside Associates, 205 West Touhy Ave., Suite 204, Park Ridge, IL 60068. Telephone: (847) 698-9866. Fax: (847) 698-6875.]
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