Referring Physician Survey

The survey of referring practices: reachability, discharge letter, discharge management and recommendation – analysable by specialty, referral frequency and distance to the hospital.

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Referring Physician Survey – questionnaire preview

Referring practices decide a large share of a hospital's admissions, and yet few hospitals ask them systematically. When they do, the survey often ends in a mean of 3.9 that nobody can act on. This template therefore separates satisfaction from importance: an aspect that is unimportant and rated poorly is not a problem. An aspect that is very important and rated average is one. The structural questions (specialty, referral frequency, distance) make the results filterable, and a URL parameter per department tells you which team writes the fast discharge letter and which the slow one.

When should you use this template?

This template is a great fit for:

  • Once a year to every referring practice in the catchment area
  • As a baseline before launching a referrer portal or digital results delivery
  • After restructuring departments or a change of chief physician
  • Via link in the referrer newsletter or by letter with a QR code

Every question in this template

  1. 1

    What is your specialty? *

    Single choice
    • General practice
    • Internal medicine
    • Surgery / orthopaedics
    • Gynaecology
    • Paediatrics
    • Neurology / psychiatry
  2. 2

    How often do you refer patients to our hospital? *

    Single choice
    • Several times a week
    • Several times a month
    • Less often
    • Not so far
  3. 3

    How satisfied are you with the following aspects of the collaboration?

    Matrix
    Very dissatisfiedDissatisfiedNeutralSatisfiedVery satisfied
    Reachability of departments by phone
    Appointment scheduling for your patients
    Speed of the discharge letter
    Quality of the discharge letter's content
    Feedback on complications or changed findings
  4. 4

    How important are these aspects to you for the collaboration?

    Matrix
    UnimportantLess importantImportantVery important
    Reachability of departments by phone
    Appointment scheduling for your patients
    Speed of the discharge letter
    Quality of the discharge letter's content
    Feedback on complications or changed findings
  5. 5

    How do you rate the medical quality of our hospital overall? *

    Rating
  6. 6

    Which channels do you prefer for communicating with us?

    Multiple answers possible.

    Multiple choice
    • Phone with direct extension
    • Fax
    • Secure email
    • Referrer portal
    • In-person exchange and case discussions
  7. 7

    In the last twelve months, have you deliberately referred patients to another hospital although we could have treated them?

    Single choice
    • Yes, frequently
    • Yes, occasionally
    • No
  8. 8

    How likely are you to recommend our hospital to a colleague? *

    NPS (0–10)
  9. 9

    What should we improve first in the collaboration?

    Long text
  10. 10

    How far is your practice from our hospital?

    Single choice
    • Up to 10 km
    • 10 to 30 km
    • More than 30 km

From questionnaire to dashboard

The questionnaire produces a dashboard for hospital management and the chief physicians:

  • Satisfaction per department: The crosstab of rating aspects against department as a heatmap: which department slips on the discharge letter, which on discharge management.
  • Importance against satisfaction: Each aspect as a dot: bottom right sit the important topics with poor ratings, i.e. the list for the next chief physicians' meeting.
  • Referrer NPS: The Net Promoter Score with promoters, passives and detractors, filterable by specialty and referral frequency.

Go deeper

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Frequently asked questions

How do we analyse by department without identifying the practice?
Send a separate link per department with a URL parameter, for example ?department=cardiology. The value is stored with each response as a variable and is available in the dashboard as a filter. The response itself stays anonymous; DataLion stores neither IP address nor contact details. For small departments you can set a minimum case count below which no figures are shown.
What is the point of the double matrix of satisfaction and importance?
The gap. An aspect with high importance and low satisfaction is where action is needed; everything else is background noise. In DataLion you overlay both matrices as a scatter plot or compute the gap as a calculated metric. The resulting ranking is usually much shorter than the list of everything rated poorly.
Do physicians actually answer a survey like this?
Response rates of 20 to 35 percent are realistic when the survey is short, the sender is the medical director rather than the marketing department and one reminder follows. This template deliberately stays at ten questions. DataLion's fieldwork module sends invitations and reminders and tracks delivery status, so a follow-up does not depend on a manual mail merge.

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