Custom software development for patient feedback and tracking

Table of Contents

Introduction

Patient satisfaction and patient feedback are driving considerable attention in modern healthcare. Especially with the increased adoption of value-based care and the focus on patient-centered care in newer models such as primary care homes and accountable care organizations, capturing feedback and utilizing it to improve services and patient experience is gaining significant importance. Manually handling the acquisition of feedback and utilizing it efficiently calls for more brainpower and can sometimes result in inefficiencies and missed opportunities for important feedback on service improvement.

In addition, healthcare custom software development is an effective way to streamline the patient feedback process. Because technology can collect almost real-time information, sending out surveys digitally, through a portal or mobile app, and collecting timely patient comments and information becomes easier. Additionally, using custom software built for your practice and facility, you can use analysis to track your scores over time, identify areas with room for improvement, and track and measure your response rates. Taking the initiative to capture and build up the data will allow you to ensure that the feedback system is working effectively and help you become a more responsive and better-quality practice.

Why collecting patient feedback is essential in healthcare

The importance of patient feedback in modern healthcare

Seeking patient feedback is not just a good practice, it is a necessity in modern healthcare. Patient feedback is a powerful tool that can enhance the quality of services provided by healthcare organizations, improve physician-patient communication, and boost overall patient satisfaction by understanding the patients’ perspectives. It is crucial that we actively seek outpatient feedback to ensure our services meet the needs of the patients and align with their expectations. Patient feedback plays a vital role in uncovering hidden issues in service delivery, service effectiveness, and quality, which are essential for improvement. By actively engaging with patient feedback, healthcare providers can better understand and meet the needs of their patients, fostering a stronger connection and improving the quality of care.

Furthermore, patient feedback is not just about improving services, it also plays a crucial role in healthcare accreditation, patient retention, and competitive differentiation. Accreditation bodies often require providers to demonstrate how patient feedback contributes to satisfaction and continuous improvements, serving as a key factor in certification renewal. High patient satisfaction leads to better retention rates, as satisfied patients return and recommend the practice to others. By actively collecting and acting upon patient feedback, a healthcare provider can distinguish itself from competitors, showcasing a commitment to excellence and responsiveness that is highly appealing to new patients and enhances the provider’s reputation in the community.

How custom software can optimize patient feedback and tracking

The role of custom software in streamlining feedback management

Many practices suffer from generic or manual systems for managing patient feedback. Not only are these prone to errors, delays, and difficulties in aggregating results, but they also make it difficult to quickly spot connections between different data sources and provoke important business-related reflections. For example, while generic software solutions can be helpful – such as basic commercial programs that enable the production of simple digital forms – it’s common for a practice to have inefficiencies if it uses a solution that isn’t configured to meet its specific needs. This could slice off critical data streams or even create additional steps to capture them.

Custom healthcare software solutions empower you to manage patient feedback by automating and streamlining the process. Hence, it occurs in real-time in a way tailored to fit your organization. You can use digital surveys, patient portals, and mobile apps to capture a patient’s feedback right as it is happening and get data as accurately as possible. But once you’ve empowered your patients through digital surveys, that’s only half the job of improving patient engagement. That’s because the other half addresses inefficiencies, creating an imperative for solutions. Digitizing patient feedback with custom software also allows tracking and reacting to patient feedback. Being able to provide rapid feedback – in real-time – is immensely powerful in tackling inefficiencies. Advanced features, such as automated analysis of data and custom reports and dashboards, also allow for data-driven decisions and tailored action to address inefficiencies and quality concerns.

Features of effective custom patient feedback software

Key features of custom patient feedback and tracking software

Automated surveys and feedback forms

High-quality custom patient feedback software brings automated surveys and feedback forms that make it easy to triage patient opinions. Campaigns can be programmed to bracket all the necessary touchpoints, and depending on the triggers set, the survey can be sent to a patient automatically after a certain period has elapsed after an appointment or treatment. With healthcare staff already stretched for time, automation removes any task that does not demand human intervention, which applies to how feedback is generated.

Integration with Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems for personalized feedback

Integration with electronic health records (EHR) systems allows these custom feedback software systems to trigger personalized and relevant surveys of patients based on their history and their specific interactions while in the clinic. The direct integration with EHR systems means that these systems can control which patients get which feedback at which time, customizing the information for the individual patient’s experience and creating a seamless sharing of the data from one system to another.

Real-time tracking and reporting of patient satisfaction scores

Through real-time tracking and reporting, an organization can immediately know what patients think of their experience, updated each time a satisfaction score is submitted. Custom software can provide immediate access to the most up-to-date metrics and trends, enabling organizations to respond immediately to emerging trends and issues. Knowing at any moment in time what patients and their families think is an unprecedented ability to manage satisfaction actively and to head off an erosion of it before it even occurs.

Analytics and insights for improving patient care

Many such custom-developed feedback software systems contain powerful analytics and insights tools, which provide healthcare providers with insight and understanding on how to interpret the feedback best and use the information to improve patient care and service delivery overall. For instance, by analyzing the data to find trends and patterns, the software can point out areas where the service team is doing well and highlight areas that need work to make informed decisions.

Role-based access for healthcare providers and administrators

Role-based access controls enable only healthcare staff access to view or manage patient feedback data. At the same time, custom software configurations can allow information access levels to vary based on a user’s role (e.g., providing access levels for medical providers, administrators, or managers with various degrees of privilege). This feature helps safeguard patient information and maintains feedback integrity, allowing it to be handled per each user’s responsibilities.

Customizable feedback channels

Depending on the organizational quality improvement structure, patients can provide feedback via customizable feedback channels, which can be emailed, SMSed, or sent through patient portals. Having the software set up to collect patient input on multiple channels increases the number of patients involved in feedback collection, rather than just the same handful of patients who respond to the one channel the healthcare organization typically employs.

How feedback tracking enhances patient experience and care quality

Improving patient care with feedback data

Gathering actionable patient feedback and analysis informs physicians’ and other providers’ planning processes to improve patient care and general service quality. Feedback analysis can determine common patterns that pinpoint areas for improvement. For example, suppose feedback reveals excessive patient waits in a hemodialysis ward. In that case, providers can examine the process, allocate staff and resources differently, and then track and adjust as necessary until patients no longer need to wait an hour for their appointments. Engaging patients in analyzing their feedback will improve the quality of their health and their prescribed – and potentially received – medicines. Patients will know they are being attended to and have a say in the process.

There’s also a second, equally valuable way to take the feedback loop from patients and close it: by actively engaging with patients when their feedback comes in. Responding to patient feedback goes a long way toward demonstrating a commitment to change, addressing the problems that led to that feedback, and explaining to patients that their feedback was received in the ways they expected. This process can often be as simple as acknowledging patient feedback and communicating the steps to address things that went wrong. When patients are engaged in this way – when they not only provide input but can watch it be acted upon – patients feel valued, and their satisfaction increases, encouraging more feedback in a positive cycle of better care provision. Effective feedback tracking and responses raise patient satisfaction, improve the quality of care, and strengthen the patient-provider relationship.

Implementation considerations for custom feedback software

How to implement a custom patient feedback tracking solution in your healthcare practice

When creating your patient feedback tracking system, determining your unique practice needs and objectives is the first step. Identify areas in which you would like to improve, be it patient experience, service quality, or care protocols and procedures. Establish the features or functions that will allow you to address those needs (i.e., adding the ability to auto-send surveys, generate timely reports, and integrate them with your EHR system). With these criteria in mind, work with reliable healthcare software developers to develop a system that meets your practice’s needs. Ensure your patient feedback tracking solution is intuitive and user-friendly and works effectively with your existing system to fit your workflows seamlessly.

With the help of a competent developer who can possess deep domain knowledge, like our colleagues at Asahi Technologies, you can be assured that your custom-built software is secure, properly scaled, and HIPAA compliant. They will be able to guide you in the most challenging and daunting aspect of a digitized healthcare enterprise – data security – especially when patient information is involved. They will also make certain that the system will follow all regulations. With the right development partner, you can provide long-term support and maintenance to ensure your system continues functioning smoothly as your needs evolve. With the right development partner and careful implementation planning, you, too, can easily incorporate a mission-critical tool to help collect and track patient feedback. This, in turn, will improve your practice’s ability to provide better care and strive for patient satisfaction that every doctor takes to heart.

Why custom software is better than off-the-shelf solutions

Custom vs. off-the-shelf software: Which is right for patient feedback?

Custom software can be far more flexible and scalable than the best off-the-shelf solutions for patient feedback, which is true. Custom software can be built from the ground up to suit the needs of a practice, including workflow requirements from an EHR or other systems; features can be created organically through the process of building the software from scratch and by truly mixing and matching only the features you desire, you can create a better user experience. Plus, should the needs of your practice change in a way that may impact the software, this custom solution can grow alongside. On the other hand, if you’re using off-the-shelf software, you’re subject to far less flexibility and scalability, considering you can’t customize it as easily as a custom-built solution.

At the other end of the spectrum, off-the-shelf software can lack the necessary integration capabilities, user experience elements, data security, or specific functionality to fit a given healthcare practice’s needs. In addition, once implemented, off-the-shelf software can be difficult and expensive to customize to HIPAA or another data security standard. Custom software, however, can be designed and developed in a way that enables it to meet the highest standards for data protection and provide the best patient feedback experience, ultimately helping the healthcare practice better care for its patients.

Conclusion

Overall, custom-made software for patient feedback and tracking is the best way to ensure healthcare facilities provide optimal treatment to patients. As it allows flexibility and real-time data tracking leveraging existing systems, custom solutions perfectly fit the peculiarities of each healthcare practice while allowing them to make smart improvements for better patient care quality and satisfaction. Therefore, investing in custom software is an investment in continuous patient safety improvement for healthcare facilities.