Podiatrist Ricky Lee was invited to trial Cemplicity’s patient experience pilot program, which was first shared in a previous issue of STRIDE. Now, at the pilot’s conclusion, Ricky reflects on his learnings to help other podiatrists who may choose to explore similar options in future.
I have been involved with the Australian Podiatry Association (APodA) for many years and I have sat on regional councils, and now the Podiatry in Business special interest group. The issue of value-based health care I think will be very important for us as podiatrists, and even more importantly, as a profession.
The health care landscape is changing in this respect. I really want my team’s values to contribute to this issue; to help to map it out for fellow podiatrists.
This pilot provided us with an initial look at the future, regarding the depth of patient data we can access, and how this informs the future patient experience.
We know this landscape will evolve and continue to change, and this was the first step in that process. Sometimes that step can be the most daunting.
Looking back, staff education and compliance was initially difficult. Patient forms were sent out post-consult, and so maintaining staff engagement was at times challenging. However, this will become easier as we take it to the next level. Moving forward, we will directly involve staff and patients together, which will change our consult structure.
That said, we were able to get much higher compliance from patients than we first anticipated. However, without Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) it was our patients’ experience, which highlighted that our patients were very happy with their time in our clinic. If they did have a concern, it could be easily rectified. This showed that me that, from an experience measure we provide a very high level of care to our patients. Looking ahead, step two will allow us to start to look at , which will really highlight the value that podiatrists provide.
Fundamentally though, we did find reporting patients’ experiences was extremely valuable. It gave us insights into their experiences in the clinic that we would have otherwise not captured. This gave us a great place to begin this journey and it will continue to grow from this point onwards.
It would probably be that this was certainly an easy, low-fuss way to implement experience measures. It certainly allowed us to understand first-hand what our patients thought of our service. It also allowed us to self-reflect and grow as podiatrists.
However, most practice software that is used by podiatrists allows for a set of follow-up patient questions. This approach could be more straightforward than using a separate platform. Through small amounts of research, such as sending your patients questions about their experience post-consult, you can start to implement some simple experience measures. This will allow you to reflect on your own patient outcomes, which is immeasurably helpful.
“Cemplicity’s mission is to improve the health of millions of patients. This is achieved by capturing the insights, experiences, and thoughts that can only come from the patient. This pilot aimed to enable Ricky and his team to effectively capture, understand, and act on the insights and experiences of their patients.
You can only improve what you measure. Since going live, the pilot has received over 1,200 responses from patients. These have provided valuable learnings and highlighted the amazing work each location is doing, as well as where patients believe things are great or need improvement.
The overall quality of care and net promoter score (NPS) has provided great temperature gauges around the patient experience. All comments and stories have been read and analysed by Cemplicity’s VOICE. This AI tool extracts the themes and sentiment from every comment to provide a visual tool that illustrates the volume and split of key themes. Each location can drill down into each of these patterns, to understand and act accordingly. It is the stories from patients that provide the substance to the experience ratings and the overall NPS.”
Paul Millet, Cemplicity
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