How to enhance health checkups in Eye Care centers with quick surveys before the appointment.

2019-06-10

Usually people are coming to medical institutions with certain health complaints. Clinicians document the heard health issues and fill in the patient’s medical record, which can later be used by different doctors or other parties, taking care in the treatment. Regardless of the position or pursued goals, everyone expects that the information in the medical record accurately reflects the patient’s condition and all the following therapy is based mostly on it. Such system is functioning for years, which proves its reliability and efficiency. Right?

Wrong! A study held by the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center showed a significant disparity in the answers of pre-appointment patient survey and the medical records done by the doctor on the subsequent visit. In both cases the information was identical for only 38 patients out of 162 participants.

How the distorted information influences the treating process.

The top inconsistencies between surveys and medical records were:

- Glare (91% of patients reporting the symptom in the survey didn’t have it in medical records after the doctor appointment);

- Eye redness (80% pf patients didn’t have it in medical records in comparison with survey answers);

- Eye pain (74.4% of survey respondents didn’t have it in their medical records).

Only blurry vision could in fact become the common symptom both for survey answers and medical records. Such a serious mismatch leads to the further difficulties. Doctors dealing with the same patients in future will have an incomplete data, which can even mislead and influence the treating in some situations.

The reason for such a result is quite understandable. Medical records usually are based on the doctor-patient dialogue, which may follow a conversational path and skip certain points of the checklist. Depending on the character of the checkup, patients may decide not to mention certain symptoms or simply forget about them.

Ways of improving doctor-patient communication in eye care centers.

As the study showed, pre-appointment patient surveys can easily and effectively enhance the treating process. They help to uncover the severe symptoms, which might otherwise be overlooked and to bring more clarity to the data in medical records. 

Additionally, VAS (visual analogue scale) is a great tool for measuring the depth of the patient symptoms. Such self-reported system organized in any Eye Care center is able to constructively change the doctor-patient conversation and reallocate an excessive time from identifying symptoms onto discussing how to manage them.

The comprehensive solution for organizing any kinds of surveys is already on the market.

Clinic Evaluator, a solution developed by the market research company Examinare AB, allows to create and implement any kind of surveys according to the needs of the specific clinic. Pre-appointment patient surveys for the Eye Care center can be organized:

- with help of tablets directly on the location. While waiting for the appointment patient is handed a tablet and answers the questions. The received data is instantly uploaded and available inside the dashboard.

- by sending via email or SMS. This method works the same way as the previous one, but doesn’t need the clinic to use any devices. The task is being implemented with help of patients’ smartphones or any other gadgets with access to the internet or mobile networks.

However, this is far from the limit. Clinic Evaluator is an ideal tool for making questionnaires, patient satisfaction surveys, employee surveys, project follow-ups and other types of researches. The process of survey sending can be automatized or triggered by certain events. Team of research experts behind Clinic Evaluator is always ready to help you create an ideal survey, choose the proper distribution method or interpret gathered answers in the right way.

Start your work with Clinic Evaluator by contacting us (via phone/email/chat) or filling in the Price Quotation request at the bottom of the page.

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