POULINA | 2026-01-01 13:28:26+00:00
The Healthcare sector has transformed from just providing medical services to becoming an overall service environment where along with medical outcomes, factors such as patient experience, staff behavior, communication, and emotional comfort matter just as much. Hospitals are no longer only limited to being clinical spaces where people come to avail treatments.
Patients are becoming more and more conscious about all the other services a hospital has to offer that go hand in hand with the primary medical services. Accordingly, the needs of the patients are shifting. They look for greater transparency, better communication and empathy, requiring a holistic experience. This makes it all the more important for hospitals to maintain a good feedback and review system to keep things in check.
The healthcare sector now looks deeply into rethinking and understanding their patient experience. This makes feedback more than just a formality or an obligation and rather a necessity for hospitals to ensure greater patient satisfaction. It is now an integral part of hospital operations, patient safety, quality improvement, and accreditation standards like NABH.
Quality care essentially involves clinical outcomes, protocols, and infection control. More recently, it also includes patient perception and satisfaction that are becoming more and more important in quality care. Patient satisfaction is directly linked to how care is experienced, including communication, empathy, responsiveness, comfort, cleanliness, waiting times, and perceived safety.
Through patient feedback, aspects that are otherwise out of the radar, become easier to catch. Generally, clinical audits fail to capture factors like compassion, clarity of communication, cleanliness of wards, behaviour of staff, waiting time, comfort, and overall trust that feedback is able to bring to immediate notice. While being integral to recovery and patient satisfaction, it also adds to the reputation of the hospital and ability to retain and attract patients.
Hospitals usually face an intense environment with critical patients and procedures, a huge pool of staff, topped by varied patient expectations. In such a complex scenario, systemic feedback becomes crucial in recording essential service gaps like long waiting times, poor communication, lack of hygiene, inadequate housekeeping, delays in discharge or follow-up, unclear billing, or discomfort during stay, which may get lost otherwise.
Recording and monitoring feedback regularly also gives hospitals a chance to identify trends over time which helps in being able to anticipate challenges and apply precautions accordingly. This ensures a continuous culture of quality improvement.
When patients see that their opinions and grievances are being acted upon, it makes them feel heard and thereby builds trust. Patients also see feedback as a tool of empowerment where they can voice their opinions and become a part in making the institution better. When these opinions are upheld, it improves the relationship between patients and the hospital and thereby builds the hospital’s reputations, attracting more customers.
Now that we have established that feedback is after all a huge part in achieving patient satisfaction, failing to capture and act on feedback has consequences.
Persistent issues of cleanliness, staff behaviour and hygiene may go unnoticed until they culminate into serious complaints leading to controversies
The trust of the patients may erode and decrease the chances of returning patients and customers. It may also lead to a spread of bad word around, leading to a bad overall reputation.
Hospitals that fail to act upon feedback may never be able to satisfy the requirements of the NABH standards, thereby missing out on a standard credibility.
The National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH) is the primary body in India which lays out the standards for hospital quality, safety, and patient-centered care. Many Indian hospitals aim for NABH as their quality benchmark and feedback helps them down that very road.
NABH covers two broad categories of patient-centric and organisation-centric standards that include factors such as patient rights, access of care, infection control, medication management, patient safety etc.
While the NABH accreditation is voluntary, it is also widely regarded as a mark of excellence and demands strict compliance over 600 different categories. Most healthcare units and hospitals across India are chasing this mark to gain more and more credibility to their name.
Factors under NABH like meeting clinical and infrastructural standards are all a part of patient satisfaction at the end of the day. Recording feedback over these matters can in turn help hospitals in strengthening these areas and further ascending towards the prestigious NABH accreditation.
Therefore, since hospitals today are actively trying to acquire the NABH accreditation, measures like feedback play a very crucial role.
A good and effective feedback system must go beyond a mere suggestion box or occasional survey. The essential features are as follows:
Multi-Channel Collection:A good feedback system shouldn’t be limited to a singular channel, rather should be diverse and include mediums such as QR codes, kiosks/tablets at hospital, online forms, follow-up emails or SMS post-discharge. This helps in collecting the most amount of feedback and reaching as many customers/patients as possible. The more the opinion, the better the improvement!
User-friendly interface & accessibility:Patients from different backgrounds should find it easy to participate in the feedback. The interface should be simple and intuitive and not very complex which may deter the customers/patients away from lodging their opinions.
Real-time data collection and analysis:Feedback through these various channels should be aggregated at one station. Consolidated data helps in understanding trends and taking proactive measures. Centralising the feedback process help in that regard.
Integration with the Industry:The feedback system should be smoothly integrated with the hospital mechanisms and a dedicated team should look after the concerns and reach resolutions.
Structured feedback templates:The feedback survey should entail both qualitative and quantitative metrics, asking the recipient both objective questions relating to rating certain aspects as well as open-ended questions for the customer/patient to express their thoughts in detail.
FellaFeeds is a modern feedback platform which assists hospitals in organizing their feedback data through their multi-channel approach with consolidating the data in a centralized manner. FellaFeeds is a great platform for hospitals to capture patient experience starting from admission, to visits, to procedures, to discharge. A centralized system, as provided by FellaFeeds, simplifies the process making data collection more efficient thereby resulting in better management of grievances. FellaFeeds specialises in feedback and includes the following features that set it apart from any other in the industry.
Kiosk/tablet feedback stations placed in OPD, IPD wards, reception, and discharge counters
QR codes on discharge summaries, bills, admission slips, and ward signage
Online survey links via SMS, WhatsApp, or email for post-discharge feedback
Allows patients and families to give feedback at multiple touchpoints during their hospital journey
Instant notifications for negative feedback or low ratings
Automatic escalation to concerned departments like housekeeping, nursing, billing, or administration
Helps prevent small issues from turning into major complaints
Department-wise CSAT/NPS scores (OPD, IPD, Emergency, Diagnostics, Pharmacy)
Trend analysis across days, shifts, and staff units
Identifies recurring problems such as long wait times, poor communication, hygiene issues, discomfort, or service delays
Visual reports for management and quality teams
Allows patients or caregivers to submit honest feedback without revealing identity
Encourages truthful reporting of sensitive concerns
Builds trust and transparency
Converts negative feedback into “tickets” for relevant departments
Tracks complaint progress (open, in-progress, resolved)
Ensures accountability and timely action
Helps hospitals measure long-term satisfaction trends
Supports quality committees with data for training and process improvement
Aligns with NABH requirements for patient satisfaction, quality improvement, and patient rights
Simple, intuitive interface suitable for all age groups
Multilingual survey options for patients from diverse backgrounds
Quick setup for hospitals of any size without complicated IT requirements
Hospitals should follow certain steps to be able to establish a reliable feedback system.
Define goals & KPIs:The first step in implementing a feedback system successfully isto establish what they want to achieve. Is it better patient satisfaction, hygiene scores, less wait times, higher cleanliness ratings, or improvement in overall patient safety and quality improvement (PSQI) metrics.
Choose appropriate feedback channels: Another step is also to identify the best medium to collect feedback. For physical locations where customers can lodge their feedback on the spot, tablet/kiosk in wards and reception work the best. On the other hand, for digital methods, QR codes on discharge summaries or bills follow-up online or SMS surveys, optional printed forms for patients not comfortable with digital tools.
Design survey templates:The templates should be specific to the needs of the hospital and should cover aspects that the hospital is aiming to be better at which can cover: admission experience, staff behaviour, cleanliness, communication clarity, waiting times, comfort, discharge process, billing clarity, overall satisfaction. Include both rating scales and open feedback fields.
Ensure confidentiality and easy access: A feedback system is only successful if it is largely accessible to the masses. This applies more profoundly to the industry of hospitals which sees a large footprint of patients and customers. Making survey tools easy to access, simple to use, and ensure patient anonymity encourages honest feedback.
Integrate workflows: The feedback system should be integrated with dedicated teams at the hospital’s end that can look into the concerns and start an internal process to tackle them. Feedback must trigger action.
Use analytics for continuous improvement: Feedback must be collected in such a way that trends can be identified out of it which helps with department-wise performance, response rates, run periodic audits based on feedback data, track improvements.
Higher patient satisfaction and trust
Improved care quality
Better staff performance and accountability
Enhanced reputation and credibility
Reduced risk of public complaints or negative reviews
Continuous improvement loop
Hospitals face a very dynamic environment and patient needs can constantly change. The variety of challenges include:
Patients (or their families) may be overwhelmed or unwell and asking for feedback may seem insensitive in most cases
Not all patients are tech-savvy and these modern methods may not be well-taken by them. Alternatives in easy-to-use formats need to be provided.
Privacy and confidentiality must be ensured (especially in sensitive medical contexts).
Hospital staff may see feedback as extra work rather than an improvement tool
Feedback must be acted upon because collecting data without follow-through erodes trust rather than builds it.
In today's world of healthcare, clinical standards and accreditation by eminent bodies like NABH are a given. These guarantee safety, adherence to protocol, and consistency of operations. But they address only part of what makes a hospital truly good.
Equally important is the patient experience. How people perceive their stay, treatment, communication, comfort, hygiene, waiting times, and overall care. That's where feedback becomes indispensable.
A strong patient feedback mechanism turns patient voices into actionable insights. It helps hospitals identify the gaps, respond swiftly, continuously improve, and thereby builds a culture of transparency and empathy.
For any hospital serious about quality, safety, reputation, and long-term growth, feedback isn't optional-it's a strategic imperative. With the right approach, tools, and commitment, patient feedback becomes the foundation of trusted, excellent healthcare.
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