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Price is the primary factor in customers choosing a company -- except in health care, where personal experience with doctors or hospitals is more important. Consumers who have become accustomed to the customer-focused practices adopted by hotels, banks and retailers increasingly are judging physicians by those standards. Medicare and other payers now include patient satisfaction scores in pay-for-performance programs, and some insurers' global payment contracts include bonus pay that is dependent not only on clinical quality scores, but also on how patients rate their experiences. A survey of 6,000 U.S. consumers by PricewaterhouseCoopers showed that personal recommendations were 2.6 times more likely to influence a purchase in health care than in other industries. Nine out of 10 patients were willing to recommend a physician or hospital after a positive experience. Multiple studies by other researchers have found that online physician reviews most often are positive. Even when it isn't tied to pay rates, customer satisfaction plays a huge role in attracting and retaining patients at a physician's office or a hospital. PwC found that only 8% of consumers ranked price as the top factor in choosing a doctor or hospital, compared to 50% for health insurance, 55% for retail business, and 69% for personal travel. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Aug. 7, 2012 |
