Net Promoter Scores in Health Care and its Benefits

Net promoter score (NPS) serves as a tool for assessing patient satisfaction with the care services of a particular healthcare organization. NPS helps the management in studying the customer relationships hence their loyalty to the organization. In nursing care, this study is critically important because it will inform on which improvements an organization needs to establish in ensuring quality patient-centered care delivery. NPS is about knowing the customer’s overall experience with an organization.

Annotated Bibliography: Introduction of Net Promoter Scores (NPS) in health care and its Benefits

Hamilton, D. F., Lane, J. V., Gaston, P., Patton, J. T., Macdonald, D. J., Simpson, A. W., & Howie, C. R . (2014). Assessing treatment outcomes using a single question: The Net Promoter Score. Bone & Joint Journal, 96 (5), 622-628. doi:10.1302/0301-620x.96b5.32434 

The study assesses patient outcome responses through the use of net promoter score in the orthopedic services context. The findings show that high levels of patient satisfaction would lead to them promoting and recommending the services to other patients with similar needs. The study advocates for a case mix of different departmental overarching scores. The application of NPS in other service industries may be a little different to its application in healthcare due to the competitive and profit-motivated nature of such commercial services (Hamilton et al., 2014, p. 626). NPS measures patient experience in the care delivered which is an additional dimension of other existing metrics. The proposed change for the use of NPS in healthcare should thus be integrated alongside existing metrics as an overall measure of satisfaction aimed at establishing relationships with patients and installing necessary improvements with an objective of delivering better patient outcomes.

DasMahapatra, P., Raja, P., Gilbert, J., & Wicks, P. (). Clinical trials from the patient perspective: Survey in an online patient community. BMC Health Services Research, 17 (1)1-10. doi:10.1186/s12913-017-2090-x 

The study demonstrates the use of NPS in recruiting and retaining patient volunteers into clinical trials as partners in the development of new medicines. The inclusion of patients in trial participation is a patient-centered approach that encourages patient engagement and performance towards achieving better patient outcomes as shown by an adaptation of NPS in assessing satisfaction (DasMahapatra et al., 2017). This study presents in evidence the benefits of incorporating Net Promoter Score in healthcare as a measure of assessing patient satisfaction from the perspective of developing new medicines. Its overall impact is in promoting patient attitudes towards clinical trials.

Mackintosh, D. (2015). Net promoter scores: Monitoring practice performance. In Practice, 37 (7), 370-372. doi:10.1136/inp.h2645 

Mackintosh presents the Net Promoter Score as an effective and robust technique for assessing a practice performance and its quality through customers’ experiences. The study highlights that NPS is a feedback process that aids management in measuring customer experience. Further, the study provides that repeated carry out of the process enables tracking of improvements, thus motivates the service-offering team and helps the management to set out achievable, measurable, relevant and timely goals (Mackintosh, 2015). Ultimately, NPS tracking drives practice growth and more revenue generation. This study’s relevancy applies to the present study that through integrating NPS in healthcare, patient experience and satisfaction analysis will foster improvement in the overall healthcare delivery system.

Busby, M., Matthews, R., Burke, F. T., Mullins, A., & Schumaker, K. (2015). Long-term validity and reliability of a patient survey instrument designed for general dental practice. British Dental Journal, 219 (7), 337-341. doi: 10.1038/sj.bdj.2015.749. 

The study shows how NPS can be used in the assessment of patient perception index (PPI) as a measure of the patients’ likelihood to recommend the dental practice to other patients. According to the study, NPS use showed high levels of validity and reliability sufficient to be used in general or clinical care evaluation purposes aimed at informing areas or processes that require further improvement (Busby et al., 2015). Patient surveys through NPS offer dental practitioners confidence to continue with the use of particular instruments and procedures or seek changes. This study provides in evidence, the benefits of adopting the use of NPS in healthcare for purposes of analysis of patient experiences and satisfaction, hence inform on necessary improvements.

Krol, M. W., de Boer, D., Delnoij, D. M., & Rademakers, J. (2014). The Net Promoter Score – An asset to patient experience surveys? Health Expectations, 18 (6), 3099-3109 .

The study reveals that net promoter score is a simpler and straightforward survey method of analyzing patients’ experiences and satisfaction. NPS is a summary question that seeks to concisely examine consumer satisfaction. The study further emphasizes that NPS must not replace the existing methods of assessing client satisfaction, instead, it should complement those existing techniques. Owing to its summarizing characteristic, NPS should complement individual indicator scores in order to show differences between providers, thus informed on quality assessment and identification of specific processes that require improvement (Krol et al., 2014). Therefore, this study contributes to the topic of this study that incorporation of NPS in healthcare in itself will not present challenges that management stakeholders need to find solutions to, hence necessary to use this universal score alongside other individual indicator scores.

Ghosh, M. (2016). Case study: Text-mining customers’ viewpoint and perceived value about brand. International Journal of Business Analytics and Intelligence, 4 (1), 1-4. 

Gosh highlights net promoter scores as one of the techniques that are applicable in evaluating customers’ views and opinions in order to get useful and actionable insights for future improvements. The study provides that the analysis of customer's voice through net promoter score is critical in not only improving operations and help put strategies that can ultimately enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty but also helps reduce dormancy in organizations, hence leading to increased revenues (Ghosh, 2016). Incorporating this change in healthcare will help engage patients’ experiences about the brand of care services rendered by the organization and thus track areas that need improvement to ensure patient-centered outcomes are achieved.

References 

Busby, M., Matthews, R., Burke, F. J., Mullins, A., & Schumaker, K. (2015). Long-term validity and reliability of a patient survey instrument designed for general dental practice.  British Dental Journal ,  219 (7), 337-342. doi:10.1038/sj.bdj.2015.749 

DasMahapatra, P., Raja, P., Gilbert, J., & Wicks, P. (2017). Clinical trials from the patient perspective: survey in an online patient community.  BMC Health Services Research ,  17 (1), 1-10. doi:10.1186/s12913-017-2090-x 

Ghosh, M. (2016). Case study: Text-mining customers view point and perceived value about brand.  International Journal of Business Analytics and Intelligence ,  4 (1), 1-4. doi:10.21863/ijbai/2016.4.1.016 

Hamilton, D. F., Lane, J. V., Gaston, P., Patton, J. T., MacDonald, D. J., Simpson, A. H., & Howie, C. R. (2014). Assessing treatment outcomes using a single question.  The Bone & Joint Journal ,  96-B (5), 622-628. doi:10.1302/0301-620x.96b5.32434 

Krol, M. W., De Boer, D., Delnoij, D. M., & Rademakers, J. J. (2014). The net promoter score - an asset to patient experience surveys?  Health Expectations ,  18 (6), 3099-3109. doi:10.1111/hex.12297 

Mackintosh, D. (2015). Net promoter scores: monitoring practice performance.  In Practice ,  37 (7), 370-372. doi:10.1136/inp.h2645