Cunningham Group Offers Complimentary Patient Satisfaction System©
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Today’s physician needs the ability to quantify the level of his or her patients’ satisfaction as pay for performance has increasingly become the subject of intense interest and debate, both of which have been heightened as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services moves closer to adopting this approach for Medicare. In addition to ensuring greater reimbursement, surveying your patients’ healthcare experience allows you to know if those patients have complaints and identify areas to reduce your risk of malpractice claims.
Cunningham Group’s (CG) Patient Satisfaction Survey System© (PSSS) measures what patients care about.
During a seven-year period, the Picker Institute, working with the American Hospital Association, interviewed 350,000 patients. From this data, the researchers defined eight ‘Dimensions of Care,’ dimensions that–when added together–constitute a picture of what patients care about in a ‘good’ medical experience. The eight dimensions are:
– Respect for the patient’s values, preferences and expressed needs
– Access to care
– Emotional support
– Information and education
– Coordination of care
– Physical comfort
– Involvement of family and friends
– Continuity and transition
Our PSSS© measures your success in satisfying these eight dimensions of care. How well do you meet your patients’ expectations? Cunningham Group’s PSSS© will tell you. The survey is easy to fill out and easy to understand.
– You e-mail the survey to a patient who fills it out, then sends it back with a simple click of the ‘submit’ button. Results are tabulated and available instantly.
– The survey is available in 10 languages; and it requires no more than a fourth-grade reading level.
– The survey’s validity was confirmed by the Management Psychology Group of Atlanta, Ga.
Implement Proactive, Real-Time Risk Management
It is no longer a debate that patient complaints are a harbinger for malpractice claims. G.B. Hickson, MD, a researcher at Vanderbilt University, found that unsolicited patient complaints are statistically, significantly associated with malpractice claims1. CG asks the question: ‘Why would an organization or individual wait for unsolicited complaints?’ Why wouldn’t an organization or individual measure patient satisfaction all the time in order to understand where there is room for improvement, related to the patient’s needs?
CG promotes the use of their PSSS© to solicit real-time feedback on all patients. Our proprietary system will notify the physician, system administrator or both when a patient responds to any question on the survey with ‘Somewhat dissatisfied,’ ‘Somewhat disagree’ or worse.
Based on the responses you receive, you’ll know if your patients have complaints and identify areas to reduce your risk of malpractice claims.
Defend Against Unfair ‘Pay for Performance’ Practices by Healthcare Insurers
Increasingly, healthcare insurance companies are sending your patients surveys about the care they received from you or your organization–without your knowledge. They intend to use data collected about your practice or organization to justify lowering your reimbursement for patients insured by them!
Unfortunately, surveys can be designed to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. In other words, the questions can be written and responses limited in a way as to increase the likelihood a patient will respond in a predictable manner. Do you trust healthcare insurance companies to construct a fair and unbiased survey when their goal is to continue ratcheting-down your reimbursement?
CG’s PSSS© allows you to collect data on your own practice, providing you with ammunition to refute any insurer’s claim that your patients have low satisfaction. This will quickly reduce an insurer’s enthusiasm for lowering your payments. Your own database of patient satisfaction is powerful, especially when shared with the state insurance commissioner.
Designed for Patients with Low Health Literacy
One out of every five Americans cannot read well enough to fill out even the most basic form at the physician’s office. This means 20 percent of patients receiving any survey can’t complete it, even if they wanted to. CG feels strongly about minimizing this problem, so our PSSS© was designed for low-literacy reading ease. It reads at the 4th grade level, minimizing literacy as a barrier to responding.
Readability statistics on the survey are:
– Flesch Reading Ease: 76.3%
– Flesch-Kincade Grade Level: 4.3
Survey Brevity Avoids Responder Fatigue
A significant problem with many patient surveys is that they are long–so long that patients either quit halfway through or never start taking it. Often, questions will have a fill-in-the-blank, ‘Explain Your Answer’ as well. Our PSSS© is
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