What Does This Mean to Your Practice?

Effective health information materials are an important part of your practice. According to the Centers for Information Therapy, “effective” health information—called Information Therapy or Ix—is “the timely prescription and availability of evidence-based health information to meet individuals’ specific needs and support sound decision making.” Basically, it is getting the right information to the right person at the right time. It also means having materials that are interesting and easy to read, and that provide practical tools for patients to self-manage a condition or make a decision about a therapy.

Good health information will meet your patients’ desire for information, encourage loyalty, and improve medical outcomes, according to Kevin Sullivan, of Sullivan/Luallin Inc., a nationally known health care consulting firm and MGMA AdminiServe partner. “Both loyalty and better medical outcomes have been linked in the literature to positive affect between doctors and patients,” he says. Patient education materials can instigate and improve communication as well as empower the patient to make better decisions outside of the physician’s office.

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The patient satisfaction survey is a worthwhile tool to consider for your practice. It can be useful in determining areas that need some work to help improve patient loyalty and outcomes. “The patient satisfaction survey is a means to measure marketing strengths and weakness,” says Sullivan. “It is the returning patients, not the new patients, who bring in the majority of money in a year to a practice. The practice administrators’ biggest priority should be to protect what they have—loyal patients. This patient survey system allows you to evaluate what is important to your community of patients and to see what areas your practice should be working on. According to this analysis, health information appears to be one of those areas practices need to work on.”

Armed with patient satisfaction survey results, your practice can find out what areas need to be improved. With the Patient Education Center in your practice, you already know that you are improving one area nationally recognized as being important to patients: good health information that your clinicians can depend on.

To view the standardized form used for in-office (not via mail) patient satisfaction assessment, click here.

For more information on the MGMA-Sullivan/Luallin Patient Survey Program, contact Kevin Sullivan or Meryl Luallin at 619.283.8988 or visit them online at www.sullivan-luallin.com .

To learn how to link your practice Web site for FREE to the Patient Education Center, click here or call our customer service department at 800.626.3429.

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