Behavioral health has become reliant on patient feedback. The way caretakers and providers receive feedback is adapting and so are care providers’ approaches to ensure comfort among patients.

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Feedback is essential for any organization. It helps workers of the organization know how to improve. It also gives clients a chance to voice concerns or compliments.

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Pulse For Good co-founders Blake Kohler, Remington Rainey and Marc Weaver have finished writing their book Candid. Their book talks about the power of feedback, surveys and the psychology behind it.

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“When clients have strong feelings but no way to express them within your organization, they often vent on platforms like Yelp or Facebook,” the book says.

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Patients at health institutions rely on their caretakers, whether by choice or through necessity of survival. A level of trust has to be put in place between provider and patient. When communication is one-way from provider to patient, that creates a flimsy layer of trust.

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A group of researchers at Springer Nature studied the ways feedback is implemented in mental health services. “We notice an ironically missing perspective in feedback research – the patient’s voice,” the researchers wrote. To have patients create that reciprocated trust, it is essential for them to offer feedback.

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Most places that use feedback mainly look at quantitative data. Another study on the subject of feedback in patient-centered care, published by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), elaborates on the type of feedback patients are assessed on. “It is becoming common for these measures to be collected routinely in order to monitor patient-centred care,” it says.

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Obtaining routine qualitative data can oftentimes be more impactful for organizations. Rather than reaching a number that is set by a quota, organizations can get specific feedback to improve their quality of how they serve.

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When patients have a place to offer input, institutions and health care workers perceive a higher sense of purpose in their roles. In the Springer Nature research, they explain that therapists have a stronger “sense of personal accomplishment when they have clear feedback about how therapy is going and the opportunity to adjust care for better outcomes.”

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Another article also published in the NLM says that “simply carrying out a survey will not improve performance.” The article suggests that staff should be able to understand the data provided to them, as well as discuss how to generate improvement.

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Not only is it important for patients to give feedback but it is equally, if not more important, for institutions to show they are taking the feedback seriously.

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The research article by the NLM recommends the final step in utilizing feedback is to “decide what to do with the information and where to focus improvement efforts. This stage requires working in partnership with patients, service users and staff at every level of the organization.”

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In Candid, it gives an example of a behavioral health center located throughout Utah notifying their patients what they are specifically taking action on in response to the feedback they got. They posted these updates by simply using a whiteboard.

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This simple act encouraged patients to provide more feedback on things they wanted to see a change in. It showed the patient their voice is deemed valuable among the organization.

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Trust between care providers and patients can be strengthened through gathering and analyzing feedback. Service providers can feel dignified in what they’re doing and patients can feel valued when their voice is heard.

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To know how you can better gather patient feedback, schedule a demo with us on our website!

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