Patient Experience Rating Provides Valuable Feedback for Radiologists

Online patient experience ratings provide radiologists with critical feedback for improving performance, as well as a unique opportunity to communicate imaging’s overall role in patient care. The retrospective study, published in the American Journal of Roentgenology, collected data from May 1, 2017 to November 30, 2018 in the outpatient setting of Brigham and Women's Hospital. After all institutional visits, patients were emailed the Press Ganey Medical Practice Survey (i.e., 10 questions regarding a patient's experience with a specific provider during the encounter). Postencounter radiology surveys were sent to patients if an image-guided invasive procedure was performed.

“Radiologists scored highly on patient experience surveys when evaluated on encounters involving invasive procedures, achieving scores similar to those for other physicians,” wrote corresponding author Neena Kapoor of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA.

Based on these single-institutional surveys—whose results were published in an online provider directory—radiologists evidenced similar overall scores as nonradiologist physicians (95.6 vs. 95.9). Additionally, scores increased for radiologists (94.2 to 97.1) and nonradiologists (95.7 to 96.3) alike during the 19-month study period.

Reiterating that time-improved scores for both radiologists and other physicians might be related to the online posting of updated survey results throughout the study period, “the findings support the utility of implementing patient experience surveys in radiology,” the authors contended.