One thing we all can learn from this global crisis is that going digital and giving importance to feedback is the ultimate need of the hour. Feedback collected from patients and staff can help the healthcare sector tremendously. Also, with the world amidst a health crisis, data collected from surveys can come in handy and act like a hero in a way it can provide insights that can act as a catalyst to contain the situation.

According to reports "71% of patients use online reviews as a way to evaluate and select a new healthcare provider".

Moreover, if we consider the overall importance of collecting data right from the sources and churning it to a point that it pushes us towards conclusions, we can and will be able to make better decisions. Dropthought has been working towards making the journey of capturing real-time feedback and providing real-time solutions smooth and effortless. We run surveys on the ground level based on different new day technologies and help you in taking decisions.

Mentioned below are a few points to understand the importance of feedback in healthcare

1. Insights:

The golden egg that we acquire by collecting patient feedback in healthcare is the insights that we gather. A patient can give you 10 out of 10 on your services, but the way they rate you says a lot, it may seem complicated but the technology that we use helps us see through the words and understand the mindset behind it. It’s a complex structure that we are able to break down in simpler terms for you to understand. For example: in almost half of the feedback that are considered positive words mostly used are “friendly”, “Caring” and “understanding” were used, whereas in the other half of the feedback that was considered negative, words like “rude”, “insufficient” and “unprofessional” were used. The clear suggestions made in the insights and reports were broken down for the management to understand where to improve and what they are doing well and must continue with.

2. You can improve your online reputation:

In addition to how we started this article, it is important to work on improving your online reputation, especially in a time like this when most of us are relying on information provided digitally. Getting reviews online is one thing and receiving feedback is another, feedbacks are considered more personal and since the identity of the person providing it is generally kept confidential, it is a more trustworthy source of receiving acclamation or criticism in return for your services. Based on the feedback you can act on the blind spots before it’s too late and save yourself from getting negatively reviewed on a digital platform.

3. Improve the quality of care provided:

What can be better than knowing directly from the patients about their experience? Healthcare feedbacks provided by patients help you recognize minor details, from booking appointments to wait time to bed side manners of the doctors, you get to know about each and everything you may or may not be doing right. With data in hand coming straight from the patients, you get the opportunity to improve and eliminate the factors affecting the patient experience.

4. When you make an effort to help a patient recover, and when you make sure that you are offering a thorough and professional service, you must consider the factor that it is important for the patient to realize that you are working hard in and out by hearing them out completely. There are patients who can be outspoken and may let you know about their experience on the spot, also there can be patients who do not share their thoughts easily and may defer their physicians, which makes it even more critical to reach out to patients for healthcare feedbacks, it can help you monitor each and every move you make because sometimes you can do everything right and yet there can be some basic things you might miss out.

Leveraging patient feedback can help you beat the competition in the healthcare sector, you can improve your services, work on the care offered to the patients and also eliminate the plausibility of patients deferring to other physicians or hospitals.