Sharing third-party ratings and reviews helps consumers and prepares the organization to compete on customer satisfaction.
Sentara Health Care is opening the lab coat, so to speak.
In using third party surveys to measure customer satisfaction with its urgent care sites and posting the ratings and reviews those surveys generate, Sentara Medical Group, the health system's physician organization, is giving the millennial generation what it wants, or so Sentara hopes.
It's all in the name of transparency of the customer experience.
Howard Kern, Sentara Health System's president and CEO, says the move is part of a wider focus within the organization on customer service and transparency based on the increasing influence and power of the consumer.
"Five years from now, consumers will be much bigger drivers of healthcare consumption and choice than they are today," he says.
"What's value as they define it? As much as we're trying to give them transparency, consumers take that for granted. That's not to say we won't continue to focus on it but we need to win on the customer experience. We're used to dealing in contracts with payers, employers and government, but it's another thing to talk about winning on the individual customer."
That consumers are gaining influence in healthcare is an opportunity for hospitals and health systems to gain ground on the competition. Customer-centricity is a given in other industries, but that's not always been the case in healthcare.
Healthcare has been insulated from accountability historically because of the gulf between the consumer of care and the payer. That gap is rapidly narrowing, and will continue to do so, Kern is convinced.
Kern says what's necessary to win in such an environment is almost an "Amazon-like agenda," which is why Sentara is so interested in how the partnership with National Research Corporation—the third-party surveyor—will inform them where they might be falling short as well as where they exceed expectations.
To date, more than 85,000 Sentara Urgent Care patients have been surveyed within three days of their visit, and almost 22,000 patients have participated, representing a 25.5% response rate. NRC collects and populates the reviews, which are published on Sentara urgent care sites as an aggregate score using a five-star scale.
Sentara's urgent care centers consistently rate an average of 4.75 out of five stars. However, both positive and negative reviews are published.
The only exceptions are for posts judged offensive, slanderous, libelous, or which use profane language, names or detailed descriptions that jeopardize patient privacy/confidentiality, or comments about other providers, departments or instances of care.
Seven of eight Sentara Urgent Care Centers have implemented the ratings, and the eighth is currently onboarding.
"Transparency is important to health care consumers," says Mark Weisman, MD, medical director for strategy and innovation for Sentara Medical Group. "By posting reviews and ratings from our own patients, we're holding ourselves accountable for quality care and customer service."
Philip Betbeze is the senior leadership editor at HealthLeaders.