Press Ganey Holdings Inc.
12/09/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 12/09/2024 22:28
Net promoter score: Best practices for healthcare organizations
Understanding patient loyalty is a strategic priority for healthcare executives, especially as they navigate complexities around brand and retention in an ever-shifting landscape. The Net Promoter Score (NPS), which has long been used in the commercial sector, has emerged as a valuable tool for gauging patient sentiment. But particularly in healthcare, its effective implementation requires a nuanced approach.
By prioritizing patient experience, NPS scores can become a powerful driver of improved care delivery and lasting patient relationships. But there are a few best practices you need to employ-and things to avoid-to leverage NPS not just as a metric, but as a meaningful relationship indicator and input for your improvement efforts.
Net promoter score: Dos and don'ts for healthcare organizations
| Dos | Don'ts |
| Differentiate between a relationship NPS metric that measures brand vs. a transactional NPS metric that asks about recommendation of a specific process. A true NPS metric asks about the health of the overall relationship with the brand, which is different from an evaluation of a particular care event. There's nothing wrong with asking patients if they'd recommend a specific process or experience, though you likely don't need to express that as a transactional NPS score. You may have more robust data and benchmarking using traditional "Likelihood to Recommend" (LTR) measures for transactional experiences. | Don't color-code the NPS scale that patients see. It will bias responses. |
| Get feedback about relationship NPS independent of particular care events. When measuring the overall health of a relationship, avoid focusing on specific settings or processes. The goal is to get a general sense of how the customer feels about the relationship as a whole, vs. feedback on a specific experience. | Don't be so laser-focused on scores. It's not today's score that matters; it's if you're improving-and how you're improving-over time. |
| Ask open-ended follow-up questions to gain qualitative feedback, which complements the quantitative data. | Don't pressure patients to respond a certain way or give a certain score-a practice known as "score begging." While your scores might seem higher, coercing scores returns little predictive validity, and damages the trust in your relationship, which, in turn, compromises your entire program. |
| Dig deeper into the data, using robust analytics to understand what drives NPS scores, so you can focus improvement efforts where they'll make the biggest impact. Leverage appropriate benchmarking. It's important to compare your organization's Relationship NPS or Transactional NPS scores to appropriate benchmarks within healthcare settings (e.g., inpatient care vs emergency department, etc.). This lets you set realistic goals, identify areas for improvement, track progress, and see how you stack up to competitors. | Don't incentivize employees based on relationship NPS scores. Instead, reward staff for improvements in the operational metrics and the behaviors you want to see. |
| Don't conflate or compare relational NPS and transactional NPS, or other more traditional measures of "Likelihood to Recommend." Each has its own time, place, and context, and should be interpreted separately. |
NPS 'vs.' LTR
Net promoter score (NPS) is a specific way of asking about and calculating respondents' "Likelihood to Recommend." Overall Relationship NPS measurement can be most useful for tracking brand loyalty and the health of the relationship at a high level. Other, traditional measures of "Likelihood to Recommend" may be more helpful in understanding what features and attributes of transactions are driving loyalty.
Which metric should you use at your healthcare organization?
Short answer: both-and then some. To gain a comprehensive understanding of customer sentiment, we recommend using traditional LTR to understand how attributes of specific events drive loyalty, and Relationship NPS to monitor the overall health of the relationship with your brand. This lets you identify trends, understand underlying drivers of patient experience, and make data-driven decisions to improve the experience. By combining NPS and LTR, you unlock a more well-rounded view of loyalty and experience.
By focusing on NPS as a relationship metric and complementing it with qualitative feedback, organizations gain deeper insights into patient sentiment. Emphasizing improvement over scores and avoiding pitfalls like score manipulation can help build more trusting patient-provider relationships, loyalty, and brand affinity.
At Press Ganey, we provide comprehensive solutions, as well as the benchmarks to help you turn insight into action-and transformation. To learn more, reach out to a member of our team, and we'll be in touch.