Patient surveys: Examples, questions, and types

Get started using patient surveys with SurveyPlanet

At SurveyPlanet, we take pride in helping you provide better care to your patients. This includes not having to hand out patient surveys in person anymore. Patients can fill them out whenever they have the time from the comfort of their homes. With three simple plans, we can fulfill the needs of both small practices and large healthcare institutions. No matter which plan you choose, you’ll always have SSL security, unlimited surveys and responses, and a slew of healthcare and patient survey templates at your disposal. Sign up for an account and explore the possibilities of pre-made patients surveys templates, question branching, powerful analytics, and easy export.

The importance of patient satisfaction surveys

From the moment a patient sets foot in the waiting room of your healthcare institution, everything that happens influences their experience. Patient satisfaction surveys offer you insights that go way beyond what happens in the exam room. From accessibility and the friendliness of the staff that welcomes them to the doctors, management, services quality, and procedures they encounter, patients form opinions on everything. If you want your practice to grow and provide top-notch medical care, it’s crucial for you to know what they think.

Healthcare surveys offer a chance to assess every part of your healthcare institution, from what employees think to the habits your patients have. And patient surveys let you collect and analyze patients’ feedback and optimize care accordingly. Whether you want to measure their overall satisfaction with a patient satisfaction survey or you’re interested in the performance of individual doctors, patient surveys are the way to go.

Best practices for patient experience surveys

Before beginning, it’s important to keep some things in mind. Naturally, you want to get truthful feedback and high response rates, and these best practices will get you up to speed:

• Write straightforward questions without using too much medical jargon.
• While SurveyPlanet takes security very seriously, be sure your survey complies with HIPAA regulations, and keep in mind that SurveyPlanet is not HIPAA compliant.
• Increase patient engagement by transparently telling patients why their responses matter and how completing the survey will benefit them.
• Focus on one goal at a time. Maybe you’re eager to try out as many patient questionnaires as possible, but we recommend starting with 1-2 patient survey templates and prioritizing what to measure. It can be a patient satisfaction survey or a hospital visit survey—whatever you feel is most important.
• Combine various types of questions, including multiple choice questions, essay questions, scale, and ranges. Keep in mind that too many open-ended questions can overwhelm respondents and make it harder to analyze responses.

How to distribute patient surveys

It’s not enough to create an amazing patient survey. It’s vital to strategically distribute it to your patients to get a higher response rate. We recommend sending an email with the link to the survey. But what other steps can you do to ensure they take the time to fill it out?

• While they are still in your healthcare facility, confirm that the email address is up to date.
• Inform them that you’ll send out a survey and explain why their responses matter and will create change.
• Don’t make lengthy surveys, since this overwhelms patients and decreases the response rate. Try to keep the completion time under five minutes. With SurveyPlanet’s survey length estimate, you’ll always know how much time it takes for respondents to finish your survey.
• Send patient feedback surveys one or two days after their visit while it’s still fresh in their minds. This will help you get honest feedback.

With these tricks up your sleeve, you’ll successfully distribute patient surveys with a high response rate that delivers statistically significant results.

Share results of patient satisfaction surveys with employees

Once you have the data, all the research information you’ve collected can be overwhelming. Some of it may come as a surprise. But it’s important to remember why you conducted the survey in the first place. Patient experience surveys help a health organization better care for patients and build a stronger brand in the community.

Once you’ve gotten patients’ feedback, it’s time to act on it. Patient satisfaction surveys can also be used to boost morale among employees while also helping resolve any issues you may not be aware of. Share the results of the patient satisfaction questionnaire with employees during staff meetings, celebrate great feedback together, and make a plan to solve problems and improve service quality. And we’re not only talking about medical staff, but also other employees who make it all possible day in and day out. Patient satisfaction comes from the overall experience with the institution—as we’ve already said, from the moment the patient sets foot in the facility.

Patient survey questions and templates

We’ve prepared some patient survey questions you can use to get immediate feedback from your patients:

1. Please briefly describe any chronic illnesses or ailments that you have.
2. Please indicate how much you agree with the following statements (from 1-5) about your most recent hospital visit.
3. Would you recommend this hospital to your family and friends?
4. Did the hospital staff thoroughly explain your treatment options?
5. Please rate the experience of booking appointments from 1 (very easy) to 7 (very difficult).
6. In your opinion, what are some things we could improve?
7. How would you rate the hygiene at our facility?
8. How satisfied are you with your current insurance plan?
9. How frequently have you visited our healthcare institution in the last two years?
10. How would you rate our staff’s empathy towards you?

Although patient satisfaction surveys are one of the most important methods for gathering patient feedback, they can be time-consuming and difficult to manage. Fortunately, there are tools available you can use to help improve your efforts at collecting information and learning which areas of your practice need improvement so the best health care is offered to your clients.

One of them is our pre-made patient survey templates that you can use as soon as you sign up for a SurveyPlanet account. Creating with SurveyPlanet is fast and easy, and with the Pro plan, you can also upload images and easily export results in whatever format you prefer. With patient surveys' actionable insights, you’ll know exactly what your patients need and expect from you!