Secret Shoppers to Improve Your Healthcare Business

Any health care business can benefit from implementing a secret shopper program. Hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, medical clinics and doctors' offices can improve not only patient satisfaction, but also quality, efficiency and profitability.

A healthcare secret shopper program is unique from retail programs in that the shoppers may have to undergo clinical testing to gain the full experience. Some programs go so far as to subject the shopper to diagnostic tests such as MRIs and blood draws, but rarely further than that. Your program need not go quite that far to reap the rewards of a secret shopper program; that's a choice you can make and depends on how far into the patient experience you want to evaluate.

Obviously, you'll have to weigh the cost of unnecessary procedures against the knowledge you'll gain from delving into those experiences from a patient perspective. If you're evaluating an imaging center's patient satisfaction, undergoing an exam is a major part of the patient experience. You should take that into consideration before you decide. On the other hand, if you're evaluating an emergency room, undergoing clinical procedures and exams might not be your primary concern (and they are more costly in this setting). You might prefer to evaluate just the triage experience and ask your shoppers to refuse treatment once they're sent to the back.

Whatever you decide, we've compiled a few tips to get you started on designing a successful healthcare secret shopper program.

1. Involve employees from the beginning. Secret shopper programs can be devastating to employee morale if executed poorly. Avoid this by simply keeping them informed. Better yet, involve them in the design process. For more information, read our previous post about getting your team invested in a project.

2. Set measurable goals and make them clear. Before you design your secret shopper program, identify your organization's goals. And don't pick goals like "improve patient satisfaction" or "reduce wait time." Make them specific and measurable so you'll know if the program is working. "Improve ER patient survey scores by 15%" is a good start. Make sure you clearly communicate your goals to employees before the program starts.

3. Evaluate strategically. Think carefully about what you measure and how you measure it. Include the visitor's perspective as well as the patient's. Establish a consistent grading system so you can compare units and departments. Measure on the same scale and use standard dimensions like "service," "process," "friendliness" and "professionalism." Don't use employees as secret shoppers. You run the risk that they'll be recognized and perhaps more importantly, you don't want to allow bias in the evaluation (or even the perception of bias). Finally, consider measuring process as well as experiential data. Have your shopper track wait times and how long it takes to accomplish key tasks like registration.

4. Analyze, report and share the results with employees. Post the results of every secret shopper encounter for all employees to see and to learn from. Consider creating friendly competition with contests and always reward positive outcomes.

5. Make improvements and educate staff. When outcomes aren't so positive, learn from the results, make improvements and educate staff. Do not make it punitive. Again, involving staff is very important and this is another opportunity to do that. Gather your team and identify solutions together.

6. Publicize your work. Let the public know what you're up to; it's a great way to show your commitment to your patients and visitors. Plus you could win over some new fans and increase your market share.

Our healthcare consultants can help you design and implement a successful secret shopper program. Contact us to learn more.