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Pain and parking: Capturing the patient experience

Zal Press and Anna Greenberg

A patient’s experience interacting with the health care system is one of the most important indications of how well that system is functioning. In fact, better patient experience is one of the four parts of the Quadruple Aim for health care systems (along with better outcomes, lower costs, and an improved clinician experience). Here, patient advisor Zal Press (@PatientCommando) and Health Quality Ontario’s Interim President and CEO Anna Greenberg provide their perspectives on measuring the patient experience.

Zal Press: How do patients measure their experience in the complex world of health care? Since their reason for using the system can be about pain, let’s start there. Patients are often asked to measure their pain on a scale of 1 – 10. However, as a Crohn’s patient, the pain in my gut often feels like there’s a cat trying to claw its way out and there are many times when my pain meter hits a 12 and even a 15. Pain is also a measure of success. I remember forcing myself to get up to walk, just a day after my bowel resection, to nurture the ultimate measure of a successful bowel surgery – the passing of gas.

Anna Greenberg: For years there has been a disconnect between the type of real-world experiences of patients like Zal and how the system measures their experiences. Standardized surveys are the go-to tool used by hospitals and others to measure patient experience. However, many surveys reflect the provider or administrator view of what’s important, not the patient’s perception of what’s important, and getting access to survey results (let alone using them for improvement) can take too long. Further, organizations often focus on what happens within their four walls rather than the entire experience a patient may have, such as what it was like to be discharged from hospital.

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