Increasing patient feedback in ambulatory settings.

Patient satisfaction survey data provide valuable information about how well healthcare organizations and their individual departments are meeting the needs and expectations of their patients. Lack of sufficient data can severely inhibit an organization's ability to understand its strengths and to target areas in which performance can be improved. This article describes a performance improvement project that a hospital used to increase response rates to its patient satisfaction surveys in its ambulatory care settings. The results were significant: five times more surveys were returned 6 months after implementation of the project than had been returned at baseline. Managers and staff now have the information they need to understand how well they are meeting their patients' needs and to make sound decisions related to performance improvement efforts.