Are you asking for feedback on your Physical Therapy practice? You should, and here’s why. It’s important for so many reasons like, improving your quality of care, improving your patients experience with you, and even their outcomes.

Here at Colorado Physical Therapy Network, we have created this simple guide for general physical therapists and practices to collect and use patient feedback. It is a guide that will equip practitioners and practices with all they need to do to be approved by top-ranked Patient Feedback, and set the highest standards in their profession.

In this post, we will share some essentials of treating patients reviews, why we should care about patient feedback, how to get it, and how to use the feedback to help practice. If you are a physical therapist or have a physical therapy practice then read on.

Patient Review

Purpose of Collecting Patient Feedback

Patient feedback is important for several reasons. It does this for one reason: it enables practices to meet the mandate of the practice they operate which requires practices to gather, process and report feedback from patients, carers and others. This is so that practices can prove their ability to innovate in quality at the time of accreditation, which is important for measuring outcomes.

And second, patient input is essential for a better patient experience. By learning about patients and their needs, providers can provide better care to patients, increase administrative and reception support, and provide employees with feedback. When patients have good experiences, treatment is more likely to be adhered to, care continues, and they are satisfied.

Lastly, gathering and reading patient feedback is for the practice’s own good. Patients who are happy with the treatment are more likely to stick by the practice and tell others about it. Furthermore, patient complaints are less likely to be taken to medical-legal issues, and the staff are more satisfied, and therefore retained.

For valid and representative feedback, physical therapists and their practices need to gather it from a large cross-section of their patients. This includes patients of all ages, cultures and linguistics, sexes, visits, and levels of education. If patients are unable to give feedback themselves, their parents, guardians or carers can do it for them.

Practices can even focus on certain sub-groups of patients to get information on particular requirements. They may, for instance, get reports from Hispanic chronically ill patients, or new patients. No matter the aim, it’s necessary to have representative samples by randomizing patients, and to not suffer from sampling bias. This way, you will get the best of all worlds.

What to Collect Feedback About

6 themes that must be addressed from patient feedback:

Access and availability: Physical access to the premises, waiting times, appointment time, consultation duration, fees, opening hours, after-hours care.

Information: Including all the information given by clinical staff in consultations, proposed tests, referrals, tests, treatments, medicines, health education, and the information printed in the practice.

Privacy and Confidentiality: Physical privacy during examinations, privacy of information, and consent of the patient for external presence during the consult.

Continuity of Care: Patient relations with their GPs, GP and nurse coordination of care, co-ordination with other health professionals.

Communication and Interpersonal Competence of Clinical Staff: refers to the manner in which clinical staff listen, explain, discuss, participate in decisions, and exhibit care and knowledge of patients’ medical and personal histories.

Communication and Interpersonal Skills of Administrative Staff: It’s the communication skills of administrative staff with patients, the way they are received, and what they want to hear about when they come in for appointments and so forth.

The practices also have to gather demographic data about participants — age, gender, ethnicity, home-languages, education level, Health Care Card and number of visits to the practice.

Patient Survey

When to Collect Patient Feedback

Physical therapists can give patients three options for feedback:

Permanent Basis: Gather feedback in smaller quantities over the treatment period through different instruments and techniques. For instance, do little questionnaires every few months, focus groups once a year, or text message surveys once a month.

Big Data: Collect the entire data every three years, usually using a massive survey for all 6 feedback themes. It’s a process that must be planned carefully to allow for enough time to gather data, work on the analysis, and make changes.

Digital: Have patients visit the internet and complete reviews. This can be done right on your practice website, through Google, or other forms of patient review systems that are online.

How to Collect Patient Feedback

Plan properly and you can gather feedback from the patient. PTs and physical therapy practices need to create a plan, a roadmap with objectives, stakeholder definition, patient population, resource allocation, feedback modes, privacy of patients and integrity of data, and how to act on feedback.

Methods for Collecting Feedback

In the guide, three main ways of getting patient input are explained: questionnaires, focus groups, and interviews.

Questionnaires

Questions are the most used approach as it is very easy and inexpensive. They can cover all six themes, have quantitative and qualitative information and be delivered on paper, online or text message. You can get ready-made questionnaires, create your own, or adapt ones.

Focus Groups

Focus groups are planned group sessions with a facilitator. They can be used to learn more about particular patient experiences, as well as obtain feedback from patients who do not fill out written surveys. Focus groups give qualitative data a greater nuance and texture. But they take good facilitators, time to arrange, and can be slow.

Interviews

Interviews are face-to-face sessions between the interviewer and the patient. They are especially useful for exploring sensitive or personal subjects and getting specific feedback from patients who may not engage in other forms. It can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured, depending on the practice’s goal. They need expert interviewers; they take time to set up and analyze.

Using Patient Feedback

After getting feedback, practices need to review the data to see what can be improved. This means analyzing transcripts or notes, patterns and themes, and major or common problems. PTTs/PTA practices should prepare a report to document the results, share with patients and then make a change action plan based on that feedback.

Why Patient Feedback Can Help PTs: An Update for Physical Therapists

Patient input in this nimble medical arena has become a fundamental part of the process for improving physical therapist (PT)and PT-based care. PTs can do a lot better by having patients involved in their care and inviting them to offer their feedback and experiences. This section of our guide describes the many strengths of patient feedback for PTs and why it’s critical for giving individualized and efficient care.

Enhancing Treatment Accuracy and Effectiveness

For a lot of things, one of the main upsides to patient feedback is to improve treatment precision and effectiveness. The physical therapists must work with accurate, recent data in order to create and revise care. Feedback from patients can give valuable data about how patients are doing with therapy and help PTs modify treatment accordingly, in real-time. For example, if a patient feels more pain or discomfort after a particular exercise, a PT may adjust the exercise or alternative method. This repeating procedure keeps the treatment plan in tune with the patient’s current state and condition.

Improving Patient Engagement and Adherence

Engaging patients is a big part of physical therapy success. Patients who are actively involved in their care are better likely to follow treatment protocols and get the best possible results.

Getting patients to give input is about feeling that they have a stake in their own health. It gives them the power to actively engage in their healing. There’s also research that has found that patients who report feeling heard and valued by their health care providers are more likely to complete exercise regimens and attend therapy regularly.

Building Trust and Communication

The foundation of patient-therapist communication is communication. Feedback from patients helps you share information honestly and PTs can trust their patients. With PTs having a space to express themselves, problems can be dealt with quickly and effectively.

Such an exchange of ideas both makes for better therapy and better patient experience. You can have confidence in your treatment and you can communicate with confidence so that you can meet your objectives.

Identifying and Defending Obstacles to Progress

Patient-feedback is critical for uncovering obstacles to progress. In physical therapy, you usually have to work through your physical and mental obstacles. The more feedback PTs ask, the more insight PTs have into the barriers faced by patients.

The patient, for instance, might be unable to perform an exercise because they are scared of re-injury or not confident enough. If these limitations are identified, PTs can provide focused interventions to support and eliminate them. This preventive treatment approach allows patients to receive all the support that they require to thrive.

Personalizing Treatment Plans

No two patients are alike and every patient’s physical therapy experience is different. Patients provide PTs with feedback to tailor treatment to each patient’s individual requirements and wants. For example, some patients will be more engaged and some might require self-management support.

PTs can integrate patient feedback into the treatment plan to modify their treatments according to the individual patient’s goals and situation. Such individualization makes therapy more effective in the long run and gives patients more satisfaction.

Enhancing Data Accuracy and Quality

Complete and precise medical records are a must for providing quality healthcare. The quality of these records relies upon the patient input. Patients update PTs with information about their illness, medication and treatment efficacy, which keeps them informed and up-to-date.

This is very important information for clinical decision making and coordination with other providers. Furthermore, good records help with continuity of care especially for chronically ill or changing levels of care.

Conclusion

This article provides advice on a step-by-step process to gather and use patient feedback for better healthcare. Physical therapists and PT practices can implement the guide in order to satisfy accreditation standards, improve patient care, and deliver a positive patient-staff experience. The process of collecting and responding to patients’ feedback is ongoing and it’s a job well-planned, implemented and evaluated, but the rewards to the practice and patients are worth it. If you would like more information, contact us here at Colorado Physical Therapy Network today by calling the following number: 303-757-7004

Call Now Button