Patient Satisfaction Survey Questions and Tips

59% of patients say that they would switch their healthcare providers for better online access. 70% of patients say that they would choose a medical provider that sends emails or text messages when it's time for follow-up or preventative care. Almost 50% of patients say that long wait time is the most frustrating part of visiting a doctor. 

Patient satisfaction is the key indicator of success in healthcare. But it is nearly impossible to find out what customers want if you do not ask them the right questions. This problem can be solved using patient satisfaction surveys that that are capable of uncovering patient challenges that may easily go unnoticed. 

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In this article, we will talk about patient satisfaction survey questions that you must include patient feedback program. 

But before that, a quick recap...

When looking to measure patient satisfaction, here are a few elements that you must keep in mind:

• Accessibility of healthcare professionals
• Access to medical care
• Medical care quality
• Communication and Information Transparency
• Interpersonal skills of the healthcare provider and the staff members
• Financial aspects of care
• Facility standards
• Dietary services

A patient satisfaction survey can be conducted at various touchpoints, such as diagnosis, discharge, billing, etc. Moreover, at Zonka Feedback, we enable healthcare organizations to collect patient information and feedback across various channels, such as mobile, tablet, kiosk, website, mobile app, weblink, email, SMS, and QR code. This is because patients may like to engage through different channels based on their convenience and ease of access, and having an omnichannel presence will prevent missing out on any critical data. 

Types of Patient Satisfaction Survey Questions

You can measure success across all aspects of healthcare with a single patient satisfaction survey. The key is asking the right questions around the most important metrics that together show a clear picture of patient satisfaction levels in your facility.

Let's discuss the important types of patient satisfaction survey questions. 

1. CES 

A CES survey question measures the accessibility of the healthcare facility i.e., patients ease in making appointments or bookings for consultations, treatments, and lab tests. The answers to a CES question help in calculating the effort of patients in getting medical care. 

Great accessibility to healthcare is important to ensure patient satisfaction because it doesn't matter if your healthcare offers top-notch medical services when patients are struggling to get appointments. Measuring CES will be your first step to ensuring that patients can access healthcare at your facility instantly when in need. 

CES Question Example: How convenient was it to schedule an appointment with us? 

2. CSAT

A CSAT survey question or patient satisfaction survey measures the overall satisfaction of patients. It encompasses everything from medical care and advanced technology to staff interaction and ease of payment.

Collecting feedback on the overall quality of care that patients receive will help you discover where you stand on the scale of unsatisfactory to excellent and how far you need to go.

CSAT Question Example: How would you rate your overall satisfaction at our hospital/facility?

3. NPS

An NPS or Net Promoter Score survey question measures your patients' loyalty towards you. It helps you understand whether your patients would recommend your healthcare facility to others. NPS is a critical indicator of patient satisfaction since patients would refer your services to others only if they are satisfied. 

NPS Question Example: How likely are you to recommend our facility to others? 

4. Follow-Up 

Follow-up questions measure patients' satisfaction across different touchpoints in a healthcare facility, such as, cleanliness, billing, discharge procedure, staff proactiveness, etc. Follow-up questions help in making the survey more detailed, covering all the aspects of healthcare to pinpoint the challenges patients may have faced or usually face. 

Follow-Up Question Example: How satisfied were you with the cleanliness and hygiene standards at our facility?

5. Open-Ended 

There are only so many questions that your patient satisfaction survey can cover. Therefore, make sure to include an open-ended question to allow your patients to share feedback in their own words. It is important since it helps in identifying different patient sentiments and getting the most accurate feedback.  

Open-Ended Question Example: What were the challenges you faced with us?

Patient Satisfaction Survey Questions

You can conduct different types of patient satisfaction surveys for different patient segments. The goal should be to cover all aspects of a healthcare experience to accurately measure satisfaction. 

Since healthcare transactions are primarily on an inpatient and outpatient basis, we will categorize patient satisfaction survey questions into these two categories.

Let’s get started.

Inpatient Survey Questions

• How would you rate the convenience of scheduling an appointment with us?
• How long did you have to wait to be seen by the healthcare provider?
• How long did you have to wait after diagnosis before the treatment started?
• How would you rate the accessibility of our facility in terms of location?
• How would rate the level of comfort speaking to the medical expert about your health issues?
• How would you rate the attentiveness of the healthcare provider while listening to your problems?
• How would you rate your level of satisfaction with the treatment?
• How would you rate the knowledge and proactiveness of our medical staff?
• How would you rate the use of the latest technology at our facility?
• How would you rate the friendliness and helpfulness of the staff?
• How empathetic were the medical experts and the staff?
• How would you rate the staff members' knowledge of health insurance and co-pay?
• How would you rate the availability of all the necessary medical services?
• How would you rate the cleanliness and hygiene at the facility?
• How would you rate the effectiveness of staff in assisting you with health insurance?
• How would you rate our staff members' efficiency in conducting health examinations and lab tests?
• How effectively did our staff explain the payment options?

Outpatient Survey Questions

• How would you rate the use of the latest technology at our facility?
• How would you rate our operating rooms/patient wards?
• How would you rate the level of care during the transition from hospital to home/another facility?
• How would you rate the quality of meals for patients?
• How would you rate the quality of food available in the cafeteria for visitors?
• How adequate and comfortable was the rest area for visitors?
• How would you rate your level of satisfaction with the treatment?
• How would you rate the use of the latest technology at our facility?
• How would you rate the staff members' knowledge of health insurance and co-pay?
• How would you rate the availability of all the necessary medical services?
• How would you rate the cleanliness and hygiene at the facility?
• How effectively did our staff explain the payment options?
• How would you rate our staff members' efficiency in conducting health examinations and lab tests?

Tips to Create Patient Satisfaction Surveys

1. Include Both Qualitative and Quantitative Questions in the Survey

Quantitative questions will help you measure patient satisfaction i.e., 85% of the patients were satisfied with the medical care they received. And qualitative questions will allow patients to share their challenges with you to uncover areas of improvement.

2. Have Consistent Scales in the Survey Questionnaire

Surveys with different survey scales can end up confusing patients. So, if a question has a 5-point scale, make sure the others have the same scale too. It will not only be convenient for your patients but would also help you assess the responses accurately when you finally collate them to create reports.

3. Add Logic to Your Surveys

Not all questions in your survey may be relevant for all patients. And filling out answers in an unnecessarily long survey questionnaire can end up frustrating your patients. So, apply surveys logics, such as:

1. Skip Logic: Determines the screen the participant sees next based on the answer chosen on the previous screen.
2. Hide Logic: Hides or more questions based on the answer chosen without having to click on ‘next’.
   These survey logics ensure that respondents only see survey questions that are relevant to their experience.

4. Don’t Ask Leading Questions

Asking leading questions is a way of manipulating patients’ or their relatives’ answers.
For example, a question, “how clean and hygienic were the hospital wards?” assumes that the hospital environment was clean and hygienic, causing them to feel obliged to give a positive answer. On the other hand, the statement, “Please rate the cleanliness and hygiene of our facility on a scale of 1 to 10” aims at collecting honest feedback from the patients.

Zonka Feedback Patient Satisfaction Survey Tool

Your patient satisfaction survey can only prove to be effective when you ask all the necessary questions across the critical satisfaction metrics. And Zonka Feedback survey tool is designed to help you do exactly that. Here's an overview of what you can do using our intelligent survey software:

• Include NPS, CSAT, CES, open-ended, and follow-up questions in a single survey.
• Use patient survey templates or customize them with our easy-to-use survey builder.
• Share surveys across multiple channels, including, mobile, tablet, kiosk, email, SMS, website, mobile app, weblink, QR code, and live chat. 
• Set up custom alerts for the patient satisfaction team and resolve issues almost instantly. 
• Track and measure patient feedback through different surveys on a central dashboard. 
• Get real-time responses and keep your team in the loop. 
• Extract useful insights from patient data using our smart reporting and analysis tool. 
• Brand surveys to make them more identifiable and increase the survey response rates.
• Use different types of survey logic to make your surveys more interactive and relevant. 

Each feature is designed to help you understand your patients’ expectations better and build loyalty.