The evolution of health care mystery shopping

Patients answer patient satisfaction survey questions based on their perception, and yet there is limited context for the healthcare provider. It leaves one asking the questions: who were they interacting with, what was said, when did it happen, and how capable and reliable was the patient in making those interpretations? So instead of convening a committee to explore the reasons for low scores, healthcare mystery shopping gives healthcare customers the research intelligence needed to make real-time improvements.

In an era of value-based shopping with a focus on inpatient stays, I estimated that more than 80% of the lives affected by health systems in this country are not patients at all, but family members, visitors, outpatients and consumers of everything. from teams to Starbucks. By all means, make the patient room environment as clean and quiet as possible, communicate effectively with the patient, and ensure that the patient is fully prepared for discharge, but the emphasis should still be on the patient perception. Consumers’ observations, opinions, and ultimately decisions are derived from that source.

The high importance of patient satisfaction data means that as the data is digested, more and more questions will arise. For example, a survey will tell you that there is a concern about the friendliness of the radiology staff. After creating an overall customer service program for the Radiology Department, the next logical step is to determine how end users perceive the department, what the department’s behavioral weaknesses are, and who on the staff exhibits those behaviors.

Together, patient satisfaction data and healthcare mystery shopping can begin to hone in on meaningful solutions that make providers say, “We know from patient satisfaction there’s a problem, and from mystery shopping we know what that problem is.” And who is primarily responsible?

While it is recommended that managers look for training opportunities by observing their employees in action, they are less likely to be expected to disrupt the service culture since, for the most part, they created the culture. Because this type of research is strictly consumer insight, it provides an unbiased view of the culture of a department or organization. This gives managers a third-party perspective that increases training opportunities.

Types of health care mystery shopping

Since those early days of health care mystery shopping, requests from health care providers have become more creative, more specific, and more sophisticated. For example, a client may request something as comprehensive as a 24-hour hospital stay where the buyer is admitted over a 24-hour period to assess the patient experience from check-in to discharge. Or buyers may be asked to call doctors’ offices to schedule appointments to determine how long it will be before they are seen linking research to more efficient use of resources.

In 2008, health care mystery shopping received a great deal of national press when the American Medical Association attempted to take a stand on the practice. What was not so easily reported was the fact that the topic was postponed indefinitely. In fact, it was already customary for one of the major providers (before the allegation that health care mystery shopping unnecessarily occupied the doctor’s time) to use what they call process observations. Most effective in emergency departments, this form of covert shopping avoids taking up valuable patient time by having a shopper join a patient as a friend as they go through the patient experience.

Two of the most beneficial types of perception research are: 1) buying from the competition and 2) evaluating individual employees. Call it spying, many do, but it’s important to know the culture of your competition. For example, what do you believe and how is the patient transferred, and can the anecdotal stories he has heard be verified?

A great deal of value can be derived from conducting individual employee evaluations. For a number of reasons (cost is certainly a factor), this works best in a departmental setting and gives managers an apples-to-apples comparison of each employee relative to specific standards, i.e. Cindy is more likely to say hello to patients Jeff. immediately (setting up a training opportunity for Jeff)? Or, does Jeff do a great job of cross-selling services and should he be commended?

Healthcare mystery shopping also provides managers with concrete examples of the specific behavior that “turns patients on.” This creates the perfect opportunity to introduce staff to the behaviors the organization would like to emulate while praising the employee displaying them.

Quantitative and Qualitative Appeal

Health care mystery shopping appeals to managers and administrators, whether they are left-brained (numbers-focused) or right-brained (narrative-focused). On the one hand, Mystery Shopping is about telling stories. Fred Lee wrote in If Disney Ran Your Hospital: “What seems to be an important component of both loyalty and dissatisfaction are stories. A satisfied person doesn’t have a story to tell.” Stories are important in articulating the who, what, when, where, and how of the patient or consumer experience. The right-brain approach to mystery shopping allows customers to clearly discern the difference between a completely satisfying experience and all the various facets that went into it, and those elements of an experience that triggered dislike or frustration. At the same time, health care mystery shopping is an effective compliance tool. Standards that are specific to the healthcare industry and therefore comparable are combined with organization-specific standards to create a quantitative amalgamation where data can be spliced ​​in any way needed. Healthcare Mystery Shopping primarily answers the following question: How well does your organization perform on the behaviors and processes that you told your people are important? Furthermore, it allows organizations to measure those standards against goals based on perception.

The flexibility of health care mystery shopping

Patient satisfaction surveys are, for the most part, static. They are changing for a reason. By contrast, health care mystery shopping is much more flexible. It can be designed as a program that measures the same standards or processes over time, or studies can be developed to determine exactly what behaviors or processes are being performed.

Healthcare mystery shopping can also be redirected ‘on the fly’ if desired goals are not met. For example, to their surprise, a medical office that asked shoppers to schedule appointments found that they were not accepting new patients. Another practice that was evaluating its registrars’ customer service found that none of the calls were being answered by a ‘live’ person. In both cases, the practice held up until they could fix the problem. A hospital asked buyers to visit its website to search for specific information and then asked for a response. What this discovered was that requests were piling up on a PC that wasn’t being used. This finding allowed the hospital not to upset hundreds of consumers who felt they were being rudely ignored.

How do you know if a service initiative is really working? Healthcare Mystery Shopping is an excellent addition to any service initiative. It can be directed in such a way as to provide real-time verification that the initiative is being effective. Anything from a sign-up process to valet service can be purchased at various times to ensure the initiative’s message is received and implemented.

However, the flexibility does not extend to internal programs. Sometimes, in the name of saving money, health care providers launch a “do it yourself” program. They attempt to have employees or volunteers perform the same function that professional health care mystery shopping companies perform. This rarely, if ever, works for any length of time for obvious reasons. Insiders have internal biases and, despite their best intentions, can no longer be objective. The other reason this isn’t effective is that employees (and even volunteers) can think of a million things they should be doing or would rather be doing. And the lack of staying power for a do-it-yourself program places an enormous burden on the manager assigned to manage the task.

What customers are looking for

Hospitals, health systems, and medical practices seek out healthcare mystery shopping providers for a number of reasons. In some cases, they want to validate “good news.” For example, a client of the health system entered into a long-term relationship with the main objective of demonstrating that her services were superior to those of the competition that she also bought. A recent orientation study of over 300 ‘stores’ conducted for a large hospital on the East Coast found that less than 76% of its employees received a maximum score of five for greeting consumers with a smile. This finding was indicative of a culture that did not treat consumers in “a personal and memorable way.” However, healthcare mystery shopping gave them the advantage of validating their original concern, isolating where this concern is most prevalent, and using the language of the shopper to convey to staff why greeting people was critical to the overall perception. Like satisfaction surveys, health care mystery shopping can monitor improvement over time, but with the added benefit of telling stories to identify problems. It can also be critical in determining the specific nature of the concern and identifying where weaknesses exist.

A health care mystery shopping executive, who is undergoing therapy for breast cancer, recently blogged: “What matters to health care organizations are things like how many steps it takes to check in a patient, written greetings for frontline employees, record keeping for billing, and clinical training for new safety measures.However, as a patient, I notice if the person who checks me in for chemo smiles and says hello because they care, not if they say a prayer Then, I notice if the nurses in the chemotherapy area are working as a team and greet me personally (they should know me after two months.) But the most important thing for me is whether or not the clinical staff is aligned with my recovery goals “.

While this executive may be more attuned to her surroundings than most patients and able to articulate what it means to her, the goal of any health care mystery shopping program is to utilize the shopper’s heightened sense of awareness and ability to to effectively communicate your experiences in a clear and concise manner.