The Hospital as a State-of-the-Art Service Organisation: Continuous Patient Survey as an Instrument to Improve Patient Satisfaction

The satisfaction of patients with their hospital stay as well as their willingness to recommend the clinic to friends and relatives are important success parameters for hospitals. In order to achieve practical indications for the improvement with respect to the subjective experiences of patients concerning the quality of care, HELIOS Hospital Group has established a continuous patient survey. Analogoue to the experience in medical quality management HELIOS puts high emphasis on transparency and benchmarks, in order to initiate improvement processes. A structural analysis of the survey results shows the efficacy of individual aspects concerning the hospital accommodation with respect to the total satisfaction. This allows each hospital, department or ward to identify major drivers of critical responses and offers concrete opportunities of possible improvements of patient satisfaction.