Mystery Patients Lend Eye Opening Insight into Healthcare Operations

In the January 2, 2014 Hospital Impact blog, Jason A. Wolf, president of the Beryl Institute suggested that finding the greatest opportunities for excellence and improvement in the patient experience comes back to a willingness to constantly ask questions, try new things and avoid being lured in by promises of “best practices” or prepackaged solutions.

I found Jason’s comments interesting when thinking about why more healthcare organizations don’t try mystery shopping to take their service and patient satisfaction to the next level. Unlike other service industries that routinely use mystery shopping reports to increase customer satisfaction and retention, many healthcare leaders are reluctant to take advantage of this powerful decision-influencing tool. It’s sometimes perceived negatively as a “gotcha” program rather than a way to make factual observations or a way to assess performance against standards.

The mystery shopping report

Mystery shopping reports are produced by individuals who know how to think, speak, and behave like “real” patients. These individuals have fictitious but believable symptoms, complaints or needs. Sometimes a doctor or two is involved in the plan. As ER patients, outpatients and inpatients, or as callers scheduling appointments and making inquiries, the mystery shoppers inconspicuously take notes about their encounters and observations, and turn these notes into a clear and insightful first-hand account of their entire experience. Depending on what the organization wants to know about its operations, the compilation of these individual accounts plus associated questionnaire responses are then turned into detailed reports that: