Heidi Chodorowicz, Healthcare Software Product Manager at RLDatix, recently introduced Patient Experience Surveys in a live #AskTheExpert chat with members of the HUB, or HUBlets as they’re affectionately known. If you were unable to attend this live event, here are the highlights.

During this #AskTheExpert session, Heidi was asked about the evolution of patient data collection over the past five years, resulting in this through synopsis.

The way that patients interact with healthcare today is much different than it was even five years ago. As the population interacts with service providers across different industries, their experience with providers is becoming an increasingly more important factor in their daily lives. Healthcare is no different! We are starting to see that patients want more out of their healthcare services. Whether that means wanting their voices to be heard, wanting to be more involved in their care decisions or expecting more timely and personalized care, the expectations for patient experience are becoming a priority for patients and hospitals alike.

In our research, the clients surveyed unanimously agreed that patients are posting reviews publicly now more than ever. Google reviews and social media are among the most common.

We are hoping to offer an alternate and secure approach to understanding how your patients feel before they turn to public outlets that could damage your organization’s reputation. But we know there is room to grow and we want your help to continue to evolve our patient experience offerings so that we can address these challenges to support you better and ultimately improve quality outcomes for your patients and their families.

RL aims to accomplish this with the new Patient Experience Survey tool, designed to support your patient experience initiatives by providing you with a platform to create custom and engaging surveys on the fly. Patients and their families are able to respond to these surveys throughout their care journey in a secure and anonymous fashion. Best of all, the responses can be collected in real-time so that issues can be addressed as soon as they are reported, hopefully before they leave your facility. You can easily flag priority responses and escalate them into RL Feedback so that nothing slips through the cracks.

Here is a sample workflow of the Patient Experience Survey tool, shared during this #AskTheExpert session.

Heidi was asked how Patient Experience Surveys work with other satisfaction survey providers, like Press Ganey Associates, for example. Typically, Press Ganey requires you to survey a random selection of patients after they are discharged, which introduces biases and is more likely to result in negatively skewed results. The RL survey tool enables you to collect relatable feedback in real-time. This will allow you to ask questions specific to you and your patients before they leave your hospital. In essence, RL’s Patient Experience Survey is intended to compliment Press Ganey surveys, adding this invaluable real-time communique.

Another HUBlet was curious about the mobility of this new survey tool. Heidi informed her that patients will be able to open the link from the survey on any device - whether a personal mobile device, a shared tablet, or a kiosk at your facility.

Several HUBlets were curious about how the Patient Experience Survey integrates with the Feedback module. Heidi advised that RL will be treating survey responses differently from Feedback files. “We want you to be able to collect and review data before classifying or triaging it to become a feedback file. We know that survey responses will have a different volume of data so we want you to be able to decide which responses need to be sent into Feedback. This means that there will be two records so that you can analyze your survey data as well as your feedback file data”.

Patient Experience Surveys are available in the latest version of the RL software, which is being released to Early Adopters in May with General Availability scheduled around end of 2019.

Thanks to all who participated in this #AskTheExpert session on Patient Experience Surveys. These live events take place monthly in Hub and all RL Software System Administrators are welcome to attend.

To learn more about RL software's Patient Experience Survey Tool, visit our website here.