Situation
Huntsville Hospital, in Huntsville, Alabama, was having an issue with generating a high response rate to its patient satisfaction written survey in their emergency rooms. The other issue the facility was dealing with was the internal cost of doing its own written survey. Staff would have to print, hand out and then produce the results of the written survey each month. Frustration was building because the effort being put in by employees was not giving the organization the results they needed.

Action
Huntsville Hospital partnered with The Jackson Group, Inc. in Hickory, NC to do surveying in its emergency rooms. Point of discharge surveying was decided upon as the way in which to maximize participation in the survey process. The "point of discharge" process involves getting patients' feedback to the survey before they exit the emergency room. After some success with a touch-screen kiosk in the lobby, the hospital decided that they could do better with several self-entry devices stationed by discharge personnel.

Results
The self-entry units were stationed with the discharge personnel in December 2001. The initial response to the survey was 302 respondents. As the months progressed, the emergency room started to generate greater response to the survey. In March 2002 they crossed the 1,000 patients in a month mark with 1,257 patients participating in the survey process. The facility still believed they could do better. They continued to prove it by generating 2,102 patient responses in April of the same year.

The increases in responses were due to increased accountability in the emergency departments. Huntsville Hospital asked patients who their physician was, what day of the week they were a patient and what time they were treated in the facility. The results of the survey were tied into the physician compensation package. Physicians were required to mention to each of their patients that they needed to participate in a satisfaction survey before exiting the facility. The accountability was also on the discharge personnel even more than before as the facility was able to tell what employees were not asking patients to take the survey. These breakouts did not only serve the purpose of making sure everyone was collecting patient responses to the survey, but also as a tool to track satisfaction of patients by physician, by day of the week and by shift.

Huntsville Hospital has decreased the internal workload on employees as the only time requirement is that a couple staff members mention the survey to patients. There is also a less than five-minute monthly download process where the data is sent from the units over a fax line to The Jackson Group's computer bank. After the April responses, the facilities marketing department did a quick study of their cost per respondent. The cost per respondent was less than $.10 cents.