The healthcare industry is focusing more on customer-centric approaches to improve patient care, and one powerful metric is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS is often used in business to measure customer loyalty. In healthcare, it presents unique opportunities and challenges. Here’s what you need to know about NPS in healthcare, its benefits, limitations, and how to best utilise it.
What is NPS and What is Its Purpose?
NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a customer loyalty metric that gauges how likely a customer is to recommend a service or product to others. Developed in 2003, it’s widely used across industries to measure customer satisfaction and predict business growth. The key advantage of NPS is its simplicity—it’s based on a single question:
“How likely are you to recommend our service to friends and family?”
Respondents rate their likelihood from 0 (not likely) to 10 (extremely likely). They are then grouped into three categories:
- Promoters (scores 9-10): Loyal and enthusiastic customers who are likely to recommend the service.
- Passives (scores 7-8): Satisfied customers but unlikely to actively promote the service.
- Detractors (scores 0-6): Unhappy customers who may discourage others from using the service.
The NPS is calculated by taking the percentage of promoters and subtracting the percentage of detractors. The score can range from -100 to +100.
The Relevance and Value of NPS in Healthcare
In healthcare, NPS serves as a simple, fast, and effective way to monitor patient experience. It’s easy for patients to answer, making it an ideal quick performance indicator for organisations. Healthcare providers can track patient loyalty, which is a key factor in patient retention and improving services.
NPS is highly valuable in identifying patient experience trends across various demographics, locations, or specialties. This allows healthcare organisations to pinpoint areas where patient satisfaction is dropping and take steps to address those issues. Additionally, because NPS is widely recognised, it’s a helpful metric for external stakeholders like insurers or healthcare funders in strategic planning, negotiations, and benchmarking against other organisations.
For example, our clients use NPS data to compare themselves to comparable competitors as well as negotiate rebates with health funds, showing its usefulness beyond internal performance tracking.
NPS Limitations in Healthcare
Despite its advantages, NPS has notable limitations in the healthcare context. The scoring system (ranging from -100 to +100) can be unintuitive for frontline staff, often requiring education and engagement to fully understand and interpret results.
Furthermore, NPS’s simplicity can be a double-edged sword. While it’s easy to gather, it lacks depth, providing no context on why patients gave a particular score. For healthcare providers who rely heavily on understanding detailed patient experiences, this lack of nuance can be a drawback.
Furthermore, NPS might not be suitable for all healthcare environments. In public health infrastructures like the NHS in the UK, the NPS terminology of “recommending” a service may appear inappropriate for patients who don’t have the option to choose their healthcare provider. The NHS changed its NPS question to, “Overall, how was your experience of our service?” This change helps better understand patient feelings in these situations.
How to Use NPS in Healthcare Surveys: Recommendations from Cemplicity
Cemplicity offers specific recommendations for using NPS in healthcare settings to maximise its effectiveness while addressing its limitations:
- Understand the NPS Question in context: Modify the standard NPS question to make it more relevant to healthcare, such as asking: “How likely are you to recommend our service to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment?”
- Include Open-Ended Questions: To gain valuable insights, pair NPS with open-ended questions. Patient comments can reveal the reasons behind their score, providing context and qualitative data that enriches the overall feedback.
- Add Patient Experience-Specific Questions: Supplement NPS with questions that assess specific aspects of the patient experience, such as quality of care, involvement in decision-making, and admission experience. This approach gives more actionable, quantifiable insights.
- Keep Surveys Anonymous: To encourage honest feedback, ensure surveys are anonymous while offering an option for patients to provide contact details if they wish to be followed up on.
- Leverage EHR Data: Where possible, integrate survey data with electronic health records (EHR) to analyse NPS by demographics or treatment types. If integration isn’t feasible, add demographic questions to your survey to enrich your dataset.
- Use NPS in a larger reporting strategy: NPS should not stand alone in reports. Include additional feedback and performance indicators in your reporting to provide a more comprehensive view of patient experience and potential areas of enhancement. This ensures the executive level can act on a comprehensive view of patient needs.
How to Improve Your NPS in Healthcare
To improve your Net Promoter Score (NPS) in healthcare, you need a clear plan. Focus on the main aspects of patient experience. These include safe, timely, and effective treatment. You also need caring and attentive staff. Lastly, provide a comfortable and healing environment for patients. Based on research and patient feedback insights, here are actionable recommendations for healthcare providers:
- Deliver Safe, Timely, and Effective Treatment
The foundation of patient experience lies in ensuring they feel safe and confident in their care. Key moments such as admissions, transitions, and discharges should be well-coordinated to reduce anxiety and confusion. Effective management of patient needs, including pain management, must align with their expectations. Ensuring that these areas are handled smoothly will not only improve patient safety but also enhance their overall experience, boosting NPS. - Foster Compassionate, Attentive Interactions
Human connection plays a crucial role in patient experience. Staff should demonstrate empathy, actively listen to patients, and communicate effectively. Personalised care that makes patients feel valued and understood, rather than just another case, can significantly elevate NPS. Train staff to take time to engage with patients, show visible effort, and ensure they are well-informed throughout their care journey. Active listening and consistent, clear communication are key. - Ensure a Comfortable and Healing Environment
Patients appreciate a clean, well-maintained facility that promotes rest and recovery. Features such as quiet spaces, natural light, and nutritious food can improve patient comfort. A well-managed environment also fosters trust, which translates to higher patient satisfaction and likelihood of recommendation. - Prioritise Clear, Easy-to-Understand Communication
Patients value clear explanations about their treatment and conditions. Healthcare providers should ensure that staff, especially consultants, are easy to understand and engage in shared decision-making. Providing written resources for patients to review later can also help them retain important information. - Allow Enough Time for Patient Interactions
Feeling rushed can leave patients dissatisfied. Ensure that staff spends adequate time with patients, answering questions and addressing concerns. Personalised care interactions make patients feel heard and respected, which can shift passives or detractors into promoters.
By focusing on these areas, healthcare providers can improve their NPS and can also create a positive and lasting impact on the patient experience.
NPS offers healthcare organisations a straightforward way to track patient satisfaction and loyalty. While it has some limitations—especially its lack of context and potential misfit in certain healthcare settings—modifying the approach and integrating it with other feedback mechanisms can provide valuable insights. By pairing NPS with qualitative feedback and additional survey questions, healthcare providers can take informed action to enhance patient care and experience.