Patients rating their satisfaction with radiology departments may be more swayed by the courtesy of the receptionist and the cleanliness of the area than by any part of getting imaged or interacting with clinicians. And they’re more likely to let you know about it by electronic kiosk than by online survey.

That’s according to Johannes Boos, MD, and colleagues at Harvard, whose study on patient experience is running in the March edition of the American Journal of Roentgenology.

The researchers analyzed surveys completed by 4,938 of nearly 100,000 patients who visited the radiology department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 2015. (Another 1,798 started the survey but didn’t complete it.)

The team designed the surveys to invite participants’ input on overall experience, department cleanliness and interactions with the receptionist, technologist, nurse and physician.

Assessing the results, which included free-text comments along with scoring on a five-point scale for the above aspects, the team took the likelihood of recommendation as an indicator of satisfaction and used that as their primary evaluation metric.

The tally showed that most participants, 87.5 percent, were highly satisfied.  

Also of interest:

• Many more patients responded via electronic kiosk (92.4 percent) than by online survey (7.6 percent).
• The frequency of completion rate was lower for kiosks in changing and waiting areas (63.8 percent) compared with that for kiosks next to elevators (77.8 percent).
• Cleanliness of the department (19.9 percent) and courtesy of the receptionist (18.1 percent) were the most frequent reasons for the lowest ratings.
• Wait time (21.9 percent) and communication (13.3 percent) were associated with the most frequent free-text complaints.

“Survey kiosks led to a higher response rate than online surveys,” the authors underscore. “The completion rate can be further improved by placing kiosks next to elevators. Cleanliness, wait time, patient-staff communication, and especially courtesy of the receptionist were found to be important factors for patient satisfaction.”