The results are in: 93% of soldiers, retirees, and family members report very high overall satisfaction with their experience at Army medical treatment facilities.
Survey responses were for the DoD’s 2017 Joint Outpatient Experience Survey (JOES), which also asked about ease of access to Army providers (83% positive response) and overall experience with Army pharmacies (78% positive).
The results showed an increase in satisfaction of about 2% for those 3 questions compared with the results of 2016, the first time the Army participated in the survey, according to Melissa Gliner, senior health policy analyst with the Office of the Army Surgeon General, in an article for Defense.gov. The survey goes to about 10% of patients who have visited a military health facility.
Besides sharing the survey results with the facilities, Gliner advises them on how to improve the patient experience. For instance, she looks at civilian treatment facilities to see what works. One insight she culled was that it helps to have staff members circulate in the waiting area to chat with patients so they do not feel they are being ignored. Another was that facilities should retrain scheduling clerks to set up appointments without making the patient call back.
Gliner says the U.S. Army Medical Command also is working on a website that will help military health facilities share their ideas and “further elevate patient experience and survey scores.”