Patient voices heard with NPS

9 Jul 2017

9 July 2017

NPS is used widely and well-regarded in industries like banking and telecommunications, but rarely in hospitals. Its enthusiastic uptake at St John of God Murdoch Hospital is creating opportunities for staff recognition and service improvements and importantly it is giving patients a voice.

The use of NPS in a hospital setting acknowledges that the entire experience of a stay in hospital is incredibly important to patients and it is the ‘experience’ that is being measured.

Murdoch Hospital’s average NPS score since November 2016 of 63.4 is encouragingly favourable. It’s also receiving a 30 percent response rate to around 220 text messages that are sent out daily when most organisations receive a response rate of 10 to 15 percent.

Patients regularly send comments about the wonderful calibre of the caregivers they had looking after them while they were in hospital and will name individuals.

This provides an opportunity for managers to recognise the caregiver and ensure their efforts are celebrated.

If the comments are negative and the patient has agreed to be contacted, they receive an immediate follow up phone call from the nurse unit manager.

Nurse Unit Manager Dene Olive, who runs the general surgical ward at St John of God Murdoch Hospital, said he has found NPS to be a quick and informative way to make improvements in “real time”.

“It provides an opportunity to call the patient whose expectations we didn’t meet and identify the sequence of events that occurred. The patient is usually incredibly grateful to be heard and this can often turn a difficult situation into good,” Dene said.

“NPS is incredibly relevant. You may receive feedback from a patient that we were making too much noise on night duty and because it’s so immediate I can identify the night it happened and have a quick chat with the staff on shift.”

“One patient found that when he was in hospital fasting before theatre he could smell food, which wouldn’t be enjoyable for anyone fasting, and so we were able to make a change so that caregivers weren’t heating up meals close to fasting patients.”

NPS is now part of daily life at St John of God Murdoch Hospital and is also being used to great advantage in other areas of St John of God Health Care.

On the back of the pilot at Murdoch Hospital, other St John of God Health Care hospitals will soon be implementing the feedback mechanism.

Annual Press Ganey patient satisfaction surveys are also continuing in all hospitals as these are able to give a more in-depth analysis to support the immediacy of the NPS score system.

How NPS feedback works at St John of God Murdoch Hospital Caregivers at the hospital send out a follow up text to all patients within a day of being discharged.

The text simply asks; on a scale of 1-10 how likely are you to recommend St John of God Murdoch Hospital? The patient is also given the option to text back a reason for their score.

The immediacy of the follow up and with data being extrapolated every week, within a few days of the patient leaving hospital the caregivers on the ward receive the feedback.

The overall score calculated gives a quick and immediate impression of how favourably the experience has been measured by patients.

With each individual ward receiving its own score every week, nurse unit managers are able to immediately give feedback to their caregivers and follow up any patients who have raised concerns by phone.