Patient surveys in healthcare - "MAKE or BUY"?
In an increasingly regulated and competitive environment, healthcare institutions are required to implement quality measures. Current approaches to quality management include EFQM, KTQ ®, PCC, ISO or TQM. A key element to any quality programme is immediate access to customer feedback gained through reliable and validated quantitative survey measurement instruments.
A patient survey conducted by external service providers (BUY) is a possible and frequently used approach as well as an ideal introduction to the subject. In general, outsourcing develops an increased awareness of the methodology within the organisation. Validated survey instruments are created, completed and evaluated in collaboration with a service provider. In normal circumstances, the acquisition and implementation of such surveys is limited due to the cost of administration. The collection and processing of data by external consultants render the survey management too costly to run regularly reducing the relevance of the feedback therefore minimising the effectiveness of this quality control measure.
In-house patient surveys (MAKE), on the other hand can prove challenging, as development of a questionnaire and choice of methodologies and technologies can create organisational inertia. The data collection of thousands of individual results using an analysis tool like Excel is time consuming and the creation of a statistical approach to treatment (including the necessary tools) is a complex task, which only professionals can overcome.
In both cases, a trade off exists due to limitations imposed by high cost and administrative delays in gaining results limiting the effectiveness of this method for management in making decisions.
Based upon this business problem, Electric Paper has developed EvaSys Healthcare as a unique solution to optimise and automate the management of instant feedback for the overall quality process. The question of "make or buy" is thus quickly solved in a cost effective streamlined in-house solution:
- The design of questionnaires can be carried out in cooperation with academic advisors or based upon predefined questionnaire records. It can also issue instruments acquired, validated and used by specialists.
- The data collection system automatically reads documents, via "scanning instead of typing". The cost of collecting large amounts of data is therefore drastically reduced
- Relevant graphs, crosstabs, etc. are created instantly for statistical processing. Advanced methods of bi-or multivariate analysis are also available. Connection of the collected data with comparative data from other institutions (external benchmarking) is also possible, as well as data storage in a repository for long-term and in-house comparisons (internal benchmarking).
All known quality management concepts (EFQM, KTQ ®, PCC, TQM, ISO 900x) rely on systematic feedback from patients, employees and suppliers. They also emphasize, in this context, the necessity of conducting regular surveys and analysis.
An ad hoc survey carried out by external service providers is suitable for initial analysis and for the integration into external benchmarks. For concrete measures and their control - i.e. usage as a management tool in daily practice - special, automated, internal procedures need to be carried out. With EvaSys HealthCare, Electric Paper has created an ideal instrument for these purposes.
Since EvaSys HealthCare can be operated as an intranet solution from any PC, all organisation models (locations, institutions, units, stations) can be simply mapped through the definition of access rights and roles. Users only need a web browser to access the software; therefore no involvement of an IT department is necessary.
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