Welcome to the First Research Findings of the Bi-Annual GMR Web Team Urgent Care Patient Satisfaction Survey 2017 (January-June)

This survey measures the LOYALTY of patients for their urgent care physicians and help physicians understand the needs of their patient for developing effective patient related programs to address their pain points. This will help in developing a stronger bond between patient and physician and the patients will become the advocate of the urgent care center, resulting in more referrals and fueling growth.

Key Takeaways from Primary Care Patient Survey:

• 88% of patients gave positive ratings about their visit to urgent care centers.
• 5% of patients rated their experience negative, whereas 7% rated their experience neutral.
• Overall, the Net Promoter Score, a measure of patient’s loyalty , for urgent care centers is 68.5* (Total Sample = 4,353)
• • 81% of the Patients are Promoters - Loyal enthusiasts who will keep referring other patients
  • 13% of the patients are Passives - Satisfied but NOT enthusiastic patients who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
  • 6% of the Patients are Detractors - Unhappy patients who can damage the reputation of urgent care centers and impede growth through negative word of mouth.

Sentiment analysis of all patients’ comments about their experience suggested contentment among 90% and trust among 3% of all patients, consistent with their positive ratings.

Care, Friendly, and Professional were the dominant words used by patients who rated their experience as positive.

Wait, Prescribed, Care, and Hours

Net Promoter Score* -- 68.5%

Net PromoterScore (a measure of Patient’s Loyalty) = % of Promoters - % of Detractors. Promoters are defined as % of patients who gave a rating of 9 or 10 to their Physician and Detractors are defined as % of patients who gave a rating between 0 and 6

Why the Urgent Care Patient Satisfaction Survey Benchmark Report?

Based on our experience of helping over 250 physicians since the inception of RepuGen in late 2016, we have noticed a fairly consistent Net Promoterscore of patients for doctors. However, there is a lack of correlation between Net PromoterScore and physicians’ online reviews. This could be because unhappy patients are more likely to vent their frustrations online vs satisfied patients posting a positive experience online

There are four primary goals of this report:

• Develop a Benchmark of Patient’s Loyalty for the entire Urgent Care Category .
• Help individual medical groups and urgent care centers track their Net Promoter Score vs. the entire category .
• Identify Patient’s Pain Points, develop patient’s programs to address these pain points, and track how these initiatives are impacting those pain points
• Check online review scores to make sure it’s consistent with the average of the urgent care centers used for this survey.

About the RepuGen Urgent Care Patient Satisfaction Survey

• An online survey was conducted from January 2017 through June 2017 among 4,353 patients, belonging to a handful of urgent care centers in Southern California who are using the RepuGen service.
• The patients were asked to select their likelihood of recommending the urgent care center based on their latest experience on a scale of 0 to 10.
• Patients were asked to explain the reason behind their rating.
• All the information (rating score and comments) was detached from patient and doctor identification to make the report HIPAA compliant. RepuGen cannot backtrack comments or sentiments to link Net Promoter Score or sentiment to any patient or urgent care center.
• Patients were then classified into 3 categories – Promoters, Passives, and Detractors
• • Promoters: Patients giving a rating of either 9 or 10 to their urgent care center were classi-fied as Promoters. They are loyal enthusiasts who will keep referring the urgent care centers to other patients.
  • Passives: Patients giving a rating of 7 or 8 to their urgent care center were classified as Passive. They are satisfied but NOT enthusiastic patients who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
  • Detractors: Patients giving a rating of 0 to 6 to their urgent care center were classified as Detractors. They are unhappy patients who can damage the reputation of their urgent care center and impede growth through negative word of mouth.
• All comments were grouped by positive, negative, and neutral ratings.
• An established 3rd party artificial intelligence tool was used to gauge patient sentiment by group (positive, negative, neutral) and also to gauge the intensity of the sentiment.
• RepuGen proprietary software was used to analyze word density of comments by group for all patients.

How Do Patients Rate Their Visit to Urgent Care Center Office Based on Their RepuScore*?

*Repuscore is the score given by patient on a scale of 0 to 10 when asked their likelihood of recommending the physician or medical office based on their experience of the last visit. 0 means will not recommend and 10 means will recommend.

All Ratings - 6 months

Net Promoter Score **

Net Promoter Score* -- 68.5

• Promoters – 81%
• Passive – 13%
• Detractors – 6%

The Net Promoter Score is an index ranging from -100 to 100 that measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company's products or services to others. It is used as a proxy for gauging the customer's overall satisfaction with a company's product or service and the customer's loyalty to the brand.

Key Findings:

• 88.71% of patients visiting urgent care centers walk away with high positive feelings.
• 81% of these patients can potentially be promoters for urgent care centers if the appropriate process is used.
• 19% of current patients are either very unhappy or NOT very enthusiastic about their current urgent care centers can could leave them in the near future.

Analysis:

• This key measurement of patient satisfaction suggests a very high level satisfaction.
• However, up to 19% of current patients are not promoters and could leave for another urgent care center.
• A Net Promoter Score of 68.5 suggests the possibility of an opportunity for urgent care centers and medical practices to use a referral program to acquire new patients from their existing patient base.

Patient Sentiment Analysis after their visit:

All Ratings - 6 months

Patients are asked to explain their reason for rating their visit the way that they did. RepuGen analyzes sentiments based on the comments, using an artificial intelligence tool to understand their sentiments and the intensity of their sentiment.

Key Findings:

• 90% of patients left their urgent care center with a feeling of contentment.
• Only 44% of those exhibiting “content” emotion, however showed high intensity. This sug-gests room for urgent care centers to improve their communication with patients and solidi-fy their relationship with patients.
• Intensity of the majority of patients showing “trust” emotion was medium, thus leaving room for improvement on establishing trust between patients & urgent care centers.
• Similar to “trust”, patients’ “anger” emotion intensity was medium; suggesting room for patient recovery by handling unhappy patients proactively.

Analysis:

While 90% of the patients are “content” with their urgent care center visit, the intensity of the emotion among the majority of patients is medium or low. Urgent care centers should con-sider instituting programs to increase patient satisfaction.

Given that 82% of “trust” emotion intensity is medium to low, urgent care centers should work on building higher trust.

Word Cloud Analysis

Word cloud analysis uses the frequency of words used by patients and picks up the most used words. Size of the word denotes frequency in the chart above.

Positive Ratings -- Top 20

Key Findings:

• Caring, Friendly, Listens and Professional were the most used words among patients who rated their visit between 9 and 10.
• Staff, Knowledgeable, and Nice were some other frequently used words.

Analysis:

Frequently used words by satisfied patients should resonate a positive sentiment, and thus could be used to build expectations for new patients, knowing fully well that it will resonate and that the practice will be able to fulfill the promise. An example could be making a bold statement like Listens, Caring, Friendly, Professional – these are the most used words that patients use to describe their visit.

Negative Ratings – Top 20

Key Findings:

• Wait is the most frequently word used by unhappy patients.
• Care, Hours, Prescribed, and Medication are other negative words used by patients.

Analysis:

Frequently used words by unhappy patients allow the urgent care centers to gauge patients’ reasons for dissatisfaction. However, given the fact that the comments of patients were detached, we can assume that the wait time and prescriptions were among the major concerns. These words are more relevant when linked to the patients (which RepuGen account holders can do), and also when analyzing the complete review written by the patients.

Why is the Urgent Care Patient Satisfaction Benchmark Report so important?

Online reviews and recommendations from existing patients are the best source of new patients for urgent care centers. In-depth analyses of patient experience helps urgent care centers identify their strengths and weaknesses, giving them the knowledge to make positive organizational changes.

Understanding the patient sentiment and its intensity provides insight into the patients’ mindsets after they leave the office. Urgent care centers can use the information to improve satisfaction and brand their practice consistent with the positive sentiments generated by their service.

Density of words extracted from patient’s Net Promoter Score of different groups will help communicate the desired branding effort better.

Suggested Next Steps:

Urgent care centers should gather patient experience information to better understand patient sentiment, and ultimately improve patient care and satisfaction.

Patient satisfaction data can also be used to attract more patients by:

Contact us at www.gmrwebteam.com to learn how you can start building your patient satisfaction data and how to use it to generate more patients.

• Improving online reputation by requesting happy patients to share their information on the internet. Over 30% of prospective patients select their doctor solely based on their online reviews.
• Developing an automated referral program that requests happy patients to recommend their doctor or family medicine practice to others.

Contact us at www.gmrwebteam.com to learn how you can start building your patient satisfaction data and how to use it to generate more patients.