Healthcare DIY Needs a Partner to Check Its Vital Signs

For those of us whose consultancies include full-service custom research, the advancement of DIY survey tools could be viewed with less than enthusiasm. I tend to take a different view. If DIY survey tools enable clients to preserve shrinking research budgets for more in-depth, foundational, and strategic research, I would say that is a good thing! Especially in areas like customer satisfaction, where surveys can be designed and programmed to run almost automatically in the robust platforms that are emerging in DIY, why not?

But in healthcare, which happens to be our specialty at Simply Strategy, customer satisfaction takes on a whole new set of parameters when it becomes patient satisfaction. Much is riding on data collected in these surveys, whether it’s competition in winning critical and high-dollar contracts for state Medicaid plans, or literally improving outcomes by tailoring the member experience for better engagement.     

We have all gotten surveys after a doctor or hospital visit that prompt us as research pros to lament: “They are not going to get good data out of this survey! Who designed this questionnaire? Surely not a trained researcher!” And the answer is probably not. It could have been created by someone quite adept at creating programs that improve patient experience, but perhaps not trained in the principles of good research.

Telltale signs for us? As you might expect, when we see skip patterns that are suboptimal or not working at all, leading or loaded questions, or incomplete response categories, we can guess that the originator is using a tool without expert guidance.

For other types of surveys that are not based on providers’ own patients as respondents, say in the case of doing some simple message testing, we know that sample available within DIY tools will often offer “nat’l rep” as the default for random sample. But only a trained researcher would know that you need to control for demographics in sample for healthcare in particular; otherwise, your results will not be projectable.

We also see surveys without any open ends. To be fair, open ends are a beast to code. But designed properly, a survey can use open ends judiciously in places where they will be invaluable. The results might detect causal data that justifies qualitative follow-up or reveal a true insight pointing towards a path to improvement in health outcomes.

The point is that consummate professionals in patient care shouldn’t be expected to “know what they don’t know” in consumer research.

So you could get guidance for good survey design from any good research partner, right? Actually, we would say, no! The best formula for success is to garner expert guidance for your DIY research from a partner who is also experienced in the healthcare space.

How an experienced partner can guide DIY healthcare effectiveness

The populations served by healthcare provider networks, managed care organizations, in-home care, pharmacy benefits management companies, and other partners in the interoperable healthcare ecosystem are diverse and influenced by many disparate factors. Medicare and Medicaid patients are disproportionately impacted by Social Determinants of Health, and inequities caused in some cases by lack of access to technology affect their access to care. Privacy issues around personal data regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) are far more complicated than things like General Data Protection Legislation (GDPR), and other regulations specific to Medicaid prohibit certain kinds of incentives to respondents. All these necessitate those who conduct surveys (or those who guide you on the ways to get the best out of DIY resources) to be acutely aware and always current with regulatory realities around engaging and incentivizing participation in research.

And then there is the need for cultural competency with the patient population being surveyed: Language in quant surveys (and for that matter qual research as well) needs to be sensitive and respectful, and even gauged towards different reading levels to a degree not needed in your standard consumer research. The ability to respectfully and effectively communicate with disparate patient populations is not only critical in garnering insights, but also part of the regulatory landscape as things like reading level is often dictated by governing bodies in the healthcare field.

In our full-service work, we conducted a study with mothers with Medicaid insurance who had been missing their children’s wellness visits.  The client’s confirmational bias was that these “noncompliant” parents just needed the right messages to communicate the importance of the regular pediatric appointment. Through deep understanding of the psychographics of this underserved population, we were able to structure the questionnaire with empathy. What we uncovered was revelatory. Far from being cavalier about the regular check-up, moms were spending inordinate amounts of time in specialists’ offices or in emergency room visits, as children in these populations often suffered from chronic illnesses like asthma. Without childcare options for other siblings or generous time off from employers, these moms couldn’t afford the luxury of wellness visits. This led to recommendations that the plan and providers work together to alternate ways to communicate and engage with patients.

While this study probably would not be tackled in DIY, it illustrates the value of having a research partner who understands the world you live in. Another great thing about partnering with a research coach for those types of studies that can be conducted DIY is that they can guide on the set-up – which will make meta-analysis easier once you have a critical mass of studies across practice areas of services provided to your patient populations.

So where do we net out on DIY? We believe they can be abundantly useful when designed with the guidance and partnership of an experienced research partner who also understands the complexity of your industry and your business. I guess we would say, with the right prescription, it can be just what the doctor ordered!