Over the past decade, telehealth has slowly evolved into healthcare facilities across the world. However, it was not until more recently that telemedicine became more widespread.
A survey by our healthcare market research firm shows that 64% of people are more likely to consider using telemedicine or digital healthcare since COVID-19 hit.
For this reason, many healthcare institutions are conducting telehealth satisfaction surveys with their patients to measure how they feel about this new age of treatment.
In this blog post, our healthcare market research company will describe the step-by-step process of conducting a custom-written telehealth survey.
Regardless if your healthcare facility chooses to work with a third party or conduct the survey in-house, this article will give you a better understanding of how to execute a study of this magnitude.
To skip ahead to a specific section, click the titles below.
- Importance of valuing patient's opinions
- What is included in a telehealth satisfaction survey proposal?
- Hosting a telehealth survey project kickoff meeting
- Designing the telehealth satisfaction questionnaire
- Programming the telemedicine patient survey
- Sending the telemedicine satisfaction survey to fieldwork
- Creating a telehealth satisfaction survey report
- Hosting a debrief meeting to discuss the telehealth survey findings
Need a third party to conduct a telehealth satisfaction survey? Our healthcare market research company can help. Contact our team by emailing [email protected] or by filling out a form online.
Importance of Valuing Patients' Opinions
Medical facilities are businesses, too.
But the difference between a customer and a patient is the situation. No one wants to go to a medical appointment–online or in-person. Surveys are key to making this experience as pleasant and comfortable as possible.
It’s true that telemedicine appointments carry their own issues–there’s potential for connection blips, tech problems, and other related annoyances.
This can add to the stress of already being in a medical appointment. Questions like what we covered earlier help to detect these issues (among others) and can ultimately have a significant impact on the patient experience.
It’s not uncommon for patients to feel blown off by healthcare practices and their providers. This is not a “dig” to those facilities–we understand that healthcare is a high-stress field with a lot of moving parts.
However, it’s important to constantly prioritize your patients. Just like any other business, customers need to come first for it to be truly successful. There’s no difference between this and a medical practice with their patients!
That’s the beauty of a customizable telehealth survey–facilities can tailor their questions based on issues they feel may be facing their practices.
This is what gathers those actionable results we mentioned earlier. And yes, that data will help your practice thrive–but even more importantly, it will make patients feel heard.
What’s more, these surveys have the potential to aid with patient/doctor relationships. The data obtained can be informative for doctors who want to make their patients feel as comfortable as possible. Not surprisingly, recent research suggests that this important relationship can even promote positive health outcomes.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Since patients are the “customers” of a medical practice, they need to be put first. Not only will this allow your practice to be successful, but it will also make patients feel valued (in turn, they’ll likely want to stay with your practice).
What is included in a telehealth satisfaction survey proposal?
If you are looking for a third-party healthcare market research firm to conduct your telehealth satisfaction survey, you will likely obtain several proposals.
A market research proposal commonly includes:
- Background and methodology (the recommended approach of how the firm will execute your study)
- The step-by-step process of executing the survey
- The project timeline
- Project cost
After reviewing the components of the proposals your healthcare facility will have a better idea of what market research firm is best for your goals and specifications.
💡 The Key Takeaway: A telehealth satisfaction survey reveals important information about the patient experience. When working with a market research firm to conduct the survey, a practice will understand the main objectives they need to focus on.
Hosting a telehealth survey project kickoff meeting
After choosing a healthcare market research firm or when conducting the telehealth survey in-house, it is helpful to host a kickoff meeting before hitting the ground running.
Drive Research finds a kickoff meeting is a great time for both parties to meet (even if over the phone) and discuss the objectives of the study further.
During this meeting, our team also discusses potential survey questions and gathers feedback on what type of insights are most important to measure for our healthcare clients.
This mostly assures everyone is on the same page and understands what is expected.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Kickoff meetings are an essential part of the research process. They work as a way for both the research team and the client to discuss important questions.
Designing the telehealth satisfaction questionnaire
With the project objectives clearly stated, it is time to design or write the telehealth satisfaction survey questions.
Your healthcare organization will have the option to conduct the survey online, by mail, or by phone.
Most commonly patient satisfaction surveys are completed online however, a mail survey can assure you capture feedback from respondents who are less tech-savvy.
For example, older generations typically have high response rates when a survey is executed by mail because they do not have access to email.
For online surveys, our healthcare market research company recommends including no more than 20 questions.
For mail surveys, the space for questions is even shorter. Anything longer will result in respondent fatigue where patients exit the survey before answering every question.
Examples of telehealth satisfaction survey questions include:
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with [INSERT HEALTHCARE FACILITY] telehealth services?
- What did you like the most about your telemedicine appointment?
- What did you like the least about your telemedicine appointment?
- What factors are most important when choosing a telehealth provider?
- After COVID-19 how likely are you to continue using telehealth capabilities?
By executing a custom-written survey, your healthcare organization can gather unique, high-quality, and actionable results.
💡 The Key Takeaway: To measure telehealth services for a medical facility, it's necessary to include questions that focus on appointment satisfaction and providers.
Programming the telemedicine patient survey
The written survey may go through several edits. Drive Research sends our recommended questionnaire to our clients for their approval. After receiving their sign-off, we then begin programming the survey if it is being conducted online.
If you are interested in learning more about our strategy for mail surveys, check out our blog post: what is the process for a mail survey?
During the programming phase, Drive Research confirms skip logic, termination logic, validation, and more. We also test the survey in real-time as if we were a respondent to assure the telemedicine patient survey is working as intended.
Additionally, our healthcare research firm provides clients with a survey testing link as well, so they are fully aware of how the questionnaire appears to their patients.
To learn more about survey programming, watch this short video by our national market research firm.
💡 The Key Takeaway: The telehealth provider satisfaction survey is crafted after client sign-off. Programming involves carefully running through the questions to ensure it can be taken as intended.
Sending the telemedicine satisfaction survey to fieldwork
When our healthcare market research agency launches an online survey, we do so in two phases. This includes:
- A soft launch phase: Send the telehealth satisfaction survey to a small percentage of respondents to verify it is working correctly and that patients are successful at completing the questionnaire.
- A full launch phase: Only after the soft launch phase is confirmed to be working properly do we send the survey to the remaining pool of patients.
During both phases of fieldwork, Drive Research provides our healthcare clients with a live survey portal.
This link provides up-to-the-second results of the telemedicine satisfaction survey. As soon as a patient answers a question your team will have access to the data.
Are you interested in what a survey dashboard looks like? Here is a test preview of a client dashboard.
💡 The Key Takeaway: A survey is launched in two phases: soft launch and full launch. The launches ensure your survey is working as it should.
Creating a telehealth satisfaction survey report
As fieldwork comes to a close, members of your dedicated project team will start analyzing and cleaning the data.
Our experts look for duplicate and/or nonsense responses. Doing so assures our clients are provided with a high-quality sample of their goal number of responses.
After fieldwork is complete, our analysis and reporting stage begins. Drive Research offers a variety of reporting packages to fit a variety of analysis needs and budgets.
Most commonly, our healthcare clients choose between two options:
- A topline report
- A comprehensive report
As you may have guessed, a comprehensive report offers a much more in-depth level of analysis. It often includes an executive summary, a breakdown of question-by-question results, expert recommendations, patient personas, an infographic, and an appendix.
A topline report includes only a few of these items based on client requests.
Additionally, our healthcare market research firm conducts tracking patient surveys where we execute a telehealth satisfaction survey on an ongoing basis.
This type of market research is often greater than just collecting a snapshot of responses because we collect patient feedback each month, quarter, or year.
💡 The Key Takeaway: For healthcare surveys, comprehensive reports are ideal. A comprehensive report offers a much more in-depth breakdown of data.
Recommended Reading: Ultimate Guide to Tracking Surveys
Hosting a debrief meeting to discuss the telehealth survey findings
After our healthcare clients receive the market research report, Drive Research hosts a debrief meeting to discuss the findings.
It can be helpful to read the report page by page to assure a full understanding of the data collected.
The insights gathered from a telehealth satisfaction survey should be used to improve the patient experience. This can directly impact patient loyalty as healthcare facilities navigate this new age
These surveys can also tell providers a great deal about how their patients view their services.
As a result, negative feedback can be obtained and used to better-said services. In fact, a study from Deloitte recently found that hospitals that scored high in patient experience end up profiting more.
Recommended Reading: How to Conduct a Patient Satisfaction Survey
Contact Our Healthcare Market Research Company
At a time when 86% of people are concerned about their health, it is critical to measure and improve the patient experience with telehealth satisfaction surveys.
Drive Research is a national market research company specializing in the healthcare sector. Our team is experienced in executing both quantitative and qualitative studies for healthcare organizations across the country.
Interested in conducting a telehealth satisfaction survey? Contact Drive Research today.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Emily Carroll
A SUNY Cortland graduate, Emily has taken her passion for social and content marketing to Drive Research as the Marketing Manager. She has earned certificates for both Google Analytics and Google AdWords.
Learn more about Emily, here.
