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Comment by ljoshua | Hacker News Reader

This is a growing and very important aspect of value-based care, and really factors into the discussion of quality that will be more a part of reimbursement than it ever has been. The article focused mostly on the provider him or herself, but patients also take into account the entire experience, including office staff, scheduling and billing procedures, etc.

Shameless self promotion: this is the exact problem my co-founder and I are working to address: https://www.perspexilabs.com/ (site currently looks broadly-focused, but we're targeting medical).

We're finding patients are actually very happy to give feedback, especially when given a neutral medium to discuss their experiences and when doing so very quickly after an interaction. The super-tight feedback loop not only makes everyone more satisfied, but it also has the chance to improve quality of care too.

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People interested in this might also like the "Friends and Family test", which is used extensively in the English NHS.

http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/AboutNHSservices/Pages/nhs-frie...

https://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/pe/fft/

That's virtually the exact same thing as the question we're asking, which is virtually exactly the same as NPS (net promoter score). Thank you for the links, I hadn't seen those ones before.

It looks like your model uses immediate or nearly so text messaging after an interaction. Since a phone number is protected health information as per HIPAA, I'd be interested in how it's been setting a business associate contract? I imagine there is quite a bit of red tape. Are you able to set up one and use it for each clinical entity or does it require a bit of individualization?

Indeed, you're right. It follows a similar model to services that do appointment reminders via text message, which is becoming very common.

The permission check becomes vital: it's part of the patient authorization at, for example, a first visit, and is best when also followed by a verbal authorization upon checkout. It's one of the big hurdles we're trying to overcome obviously, but we believe there are proper ways to do it and make it work within the boundaries of regulation and privacy. No good problem worth solving is without difficulties, right? :)

I wish you luck. I think your approach is far better than the mailed sheets of paper surveys I inevitably toss in the recycling bin that arrive 1-2 weeks after my children's appointments. Do you guys use any sort of incentive to boost responses?

Thanks! No incentives right now, as we don't want to bias the data. Response rates have been high enough though to blow other mediums away (by a factor of 5x roughly).

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