In era of value-based care, specialists must pay close attention to patient surveys, satisfaction scores

As more and more of the healthcare industry focuses on value-based care, providers should be paying more attention to physician reviews and patient satisfaction surveys than ever before. What upsets patients? What makes them want to return to your practice if they need additional care in the future? Knowing the answers to these questions could be the difference between steady growth for your practice and significant losses.

In the Journal of the American College of Radiology, a research team led by Andrew B. Rosenkrantz, MD, MPA, department of radiology at the NYU School of Medicine in New York, recently published its own evaluation of interventional radiologist patient satisfaction scores. What they found isn’t necessarily breaking news, but it’s still worth noting: Wait times remain as important to patients as ever.

“Patient satisfaction scores showed a highly significant association with wait times, supporting our belief that interventional radiology practices should strive to prioritize wait time reductions as they focus on improving patient satisfaction,” Rosenkrantz and colleagues wrote. “Numerous prior studies have similarly shown wait times to be an important factor in influencing patients’ perceptions of radiology practices.”

Again, this isn’t exactly brand new information—short wait times have long been considered one of the primary principles of patient care—but it’s still noteworthy to see it reaffirmed once again as the industry continues to evolve.

In addition, Rosenkrantz et al. wrote that they found no significant association between the patient’s likelihood to recommend a radiologist and the specialist’s “age, gender, years in practice, group practice size, geographic region of the United States or number of online patient reviews.”

This tells me that providers don’t have a whole lot of excuses to work with if they find themselves receiving one negative review after another. It’s not because of where in the country your practice is located or because your physicians are too young (or too old). It’s because you need to take these patients more seriously when they come into your office. You need to respect them, treat them with great care and, please, if you truly care at all about demonstrating your value, don’t keep them waiting. The success of your practice depends on it.