Types of Healthcare Mystery Shops
How do you determine exactly what the patient experience is so that you can take action to improve it — satisfaction scores, complaints, anecdotes, hunches? The answer should be healthcare mystery shopping. Below are many of the ways we get at the heart of your perception issues:
• Telephone Shops
• In-Person Shops
• Process Shops
• Process Observation Shops
• Observation Shops
• 24-Hour Inpatient Stays
• Website Shops
Telephone calls are placed from individual homes simulating a “real” patient or customer call. Calls can be recorded for an additional charge. For obvious reasons, we cannot conduct call back shops. Our shoppers are instructed to use *67 to disguise the origin of the call. We conduct several levels of telephone calls:
Information calls
These calls are informational in nature and do not require giving personal information or making an appointment.
Appointment calls
These calls involve making a “first available” appointment, giving detailed personal information, and forwarding the information to an internal contact within your organization to cancel the appointment. Up to two telephone calls will be made to meet objectives, including making calls at specific times to reach specific employees.
Customized appointment calls
These calls involve making a “first or second available” appointment using non-urgent scenarios specifically designed for the study, giving detailed employer and insurance information. The information is then forwarded to an internal contact within your organization to cancel the appointment or calling back to cancel. (These calls are priced according to the complexity and time needed to meet the objective.) Pricing for customized appointment calls are based on the complexity of the database, set-up time, and shopper training.
Call Center Studies
Perception Strategies specializes in healthcare call centers and conducts shops of individual customer service representatives so that the qualitative and quantitative information can be used for coaching purposes. Discounted pricing is available for 200 or more calls based on Informational call pricing.
Pricing/Charity Care Studies
Mystery shoppers utilize scenarios designed to assess the organization’s readiness related to the availability of pricing or financial aid information while also looking at customer service performance.
Basic
In-person visits will take place at locations identified by the organization. All locations will be identified with addresses, landmarks, and any additional directions needed to reach the exact destination. In-person shops are informational in nature and do not require giving out personal information or scheduling an appointment.
Wayfinding Studies
Shoppers conduct environmental assessments of the client’s facility from the customer’s perspective. They will provide evaluations on parking, signage, cleanliness and other environmental issues. Photography of signs, etc., is optional.
A Process Shop is a defined as a real patient going on a real appointment. Each shopper will call to schedule an appointment, arrive at the scheduled time and complete a new patient visit. The shopper will evaluate the ease of scheduling an appointment, information given, overall customer service, wait times, in-person experience with frontline and clinical staff and determine if they would highly recommend that primary care site. Shops are priced based on the complexity of the shop and the desired patient demographics.
Process Observation Shops involve have a shopper approach a real patient and make arrangements to pose as a “silent” friend to observe the entire healthcare experience. This type of shop involves the patient signing a hold harmless release and providing the shopper with a letter of Intent from the organization for security purposes.
Observation shops are used to measure wait times for patients, customer service delivery, employee interactions, and the overall process within an office, clinic, department, lobby or ED waiting area. Observations will occur on various days and times and be at least one hour in duration.
In conjunction with hospital administration and a physician, a shopper is admitted for a 24-hour period to evaluate the patient experience from registration to discharge. Individual reports are provided for each nursing shift, lab and/or radiology, and registration. A separate report is provided from a guest’s perspective.
Website Shops
The client’s website is “shopped” by simulated consumers who are unfamiliar with the client’s website. The website is evaluated based on its functionality, navigability, and responsiveness. Pricing includes the shopper waiting for a response from the client.