Incentivized digital outcomes collection

The objective of this study was to assess the feasibility of digital patien t satisfaction outcomes collection using the Internet and interactive voice response technology. Patients, health care providers, and industry sponsor s were provided with incentives to participate. The participants included t he practitioners and patients in medical and surgical practices who used Pr oject Quality Card (patent pending) and the Practice Improvement Program. T he study subjects were convenience samples of new and established patients seen between September 1999 and December 2000. There were 3 different pilot projects: QC1, QC2, and QC3. Patients were provided with a 20-minute prepa id phone card as an incentive for completing an interactive voice response call. Patients answered the 9-item visit rating questionnaire used to measu re patient satisfaction. Patients responded on a 5-point scale, with 5 bein g excellent, and responses were totaled in the categories of patient access and physician attributes and in an overall score for the visit. A total of 998 patients from 77 physician offices participated. The activation respon ses, or percentage of patients using the Quality Cards, ranged from 12.8% i n group 2 (QC2) to 26.6% in group 1 (QC1) to 34.8% in group 3 (QC3). This s tudy demonstrates that incentivized digital outcomes collection can be succ essfully implemented in multisite community-based medical and surgical offi ces. The use of Project Quality Card (interactive voice response technology ) and the Practice Improvement Program provides opportunities for user-frie ndly, benchmarked, real-time data collection. The percentage of patient act ivations is linked to provider participation in quality improvement program s. Patient participation is improved as the frequency of contact with a pee r-directed database increases.