Building patient trust is essential for patient retention and hospital revenue, but measuring trust can be tricky. Here, executives from four health systems share how they measure patient trust.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and style.
Michelle Edwards, DNP. Chief Experience Officer at Providence (Renton, Wash.): At Providence, we have reaffirmed and amplified our commitment to ensuring an exceptional patient experience across our family of organizations and throughout our vast array of clinical and nonclinical service offerings. Establishing and maintaining patient trust is key to realizing that objective as it plays a critical role in creating a better experience.
Patient trust, like patient experience, is associated with better health behaviors and better health outcomes. We know, for example, that patients who have more trust in their clinicians have better perceptions about the quality of the care they received and higher patient satisfaction levels.
The idea of trust, however, like many complex concepts, can be difficult to investigate and measure. While there are a few scales and indices out there aimed at measuring trust, most are limited in scope. So our efforts are currently aimed at understanding trust determinants and measures of trust (what are they and which are most important), for diverse populations across different clinical settings within the health system and measuring those things. We're starting with the foundational pillars that are known requirements to becoming a trusted and trustworthy organization: communication, compassion and competence.
Brian Deffaa. Chief Marketing Officer at LifeBridge Health (Baltimore): The trust to care for people at their most vulnerable moments is a humbling honor and sobering responsibility for any caregiver and organization. Like any business where people have choices, there are key indications of the trust consumers place and how this trust translates into a thriving organization. For LifeBridge Health, it's system growth and scale (a doubling in size over the last five years) as well as a healthy mix of new and returning patients. Ultimately though, the real reward is something vastly more personal: multiple generations of a family trusting their births, their broken legs and their final days to us. I can't think of a better vote of confidence.
Suzanne Bharati Hendery. Chief Marketing and Customer Officer at Renown Health (Reno, Nev.): We measure patients' trust by asking them as part of our experience survey, "How would you rate the level of confidence and trust you have in Renown Health?" We are pleased that the majority of the 12,000 patients surveyed this year rate their trust level as excellent, and we work every day to earn and keep that trust.
Lori Howley. Executive Director of Corporate Communications and Chief Marketing Officer at MelroseWakefield Healthcare (Melrose, Mass.): There are many standard approaches to understanding consumer perceptions through engagement and perception studies. However, the day-to-day focus should be measured by the depth and breadth of the relationships we have with our patients, our communities, our clinical providers and our employees. How and when are they engaging with us and how are we able to respond?
Communications play a key role in creating trust by keeping people informed and engaged. This includes transparency, especially during difficult times and with difficult messages. Having a clear message about what we offer and communicating how we are delivering on that message is our brand promise. The many months of the pandemic have taught us a lot about the importance of trust. We have experienced the trust of our communities knowing that they can depend upon us during these unprecedented times and when they are most vulnerable; their trust in our directives to follow all the important safety measures to minimize the risk of infection; and trust that we will deliver care safely under any circumstance.