Mobile, Alabama – [October 24, 2023] –QM2 Solutions proudly announces that renowned Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat practice, Premier Medical Group, based in Mobile, Alabama, with additional offices along the Alabama and Mississippi Gulf has received recognition as an Elite Experience practice by QM2. This remarkable achievement underlines Premier Medical’s unwavering commitment to delivering exceptional patient care and setting new standards in the medical field

Since joining forces with QM2, Premier Medical has received an astonishing 8,800 Google reviews, an impressive feat exceeding tenfold the total reviews garnered throughout their practice’s storied history. However, being recognized as a QM2 Elite Experience Practice is about more than just review volume; it’s a testament to the unwavering dedication to patient satisfaction and top-tier medical services.

Premier Medical consistently maintains an outstanding 4.9-star rating across all thirty-four physicians and their five locations on Google. This accomplishment is complemented by their commitment to engaging over 20,000 patients annually to benchmark CAHPS Patient Experience scores, consistently ranking above the 90th percentile nationally. But what sets Premier Medical apart is not the numerical ratings, it’s the unparalleled patient sentiment and effusive reviews that patients generously share, further cementing their status as a healthcare provider par excellence.

“We are thrilled to partner with Premier Medical Group in sharing the narrative of patient-centered quality care,” remarked James Benson, President of QM2 Solutions. “Their exceptional patient experience scores demonstrate that they don’t just speak of excellence; they consistently deliver it day in and day out,” Benson added.

James Hartman, CEO of Premier Medical Group, emphasized the practice’s longstanding commitment to patient care, rooted in a history that spans over a century. “Our practice has thrived for more than 100 years because our doctors and staff are unwavering in their dedication to treating each patient as a unique individual. This patient-centric approach is the bedrock of our enduring success,” stated Hartman.

Beyond their rich history, Premier Medical recognizes that much more is at stake. Hartman emphasized the critical role that their online reputation and patient experience scores play in validating the quality of care in the eyes of both patients and payers. Patients increasingly rely on this evidence when selecting their healthcare provider, and the practice leverages patient-derived data as an invaluable asset when engaging with payers and other stakeholders. “We have always taken pride in providing the highest quality ENT and Eye Care services to our patients, and now, we can back it up with compelling data,” said Hartman.

Premier Medical’s commitment to patient excellence and unwavering dedication to the highest standards of care has firmly established the practice as a trailblazer in the healthcare industry. As they continue to write their illustrious history, Premier Medical remains a beacon of quality, setting the bar high for medical practitioners across the nation.

For media inquiries, please contact: Ms. Zdeena Hayssen, 888-580-5282; zhayssen@qm2solutions.com

This week I worked with a large group of physicians on their patient experience and online reputation. In this engagement, I dug a little deeper and did some work on concepts of customer service and loyalty. As such, I thought to share a brief word on Net Promoter and the definition of “Passives”.

Passives are people with indistinct feelings. They are patients who will rate their experience as a 7 or 8 on a 10-point scale. They might like the physician, but not enough to recommend them. Passives will likely pay their bills, but we see patient “churn” with Passive patients. So, while passive patients are not a direct liability (they are not going to write a bad review) they do limit practice growth; And they may be more easily turned to negative with other practice factors.

For a growth minded physician, it is important to think about how she/he can more effectively connect with these patients. Without a focus on improvement, Passives are at risk of becoming Detractors. At QM2, we help drive an approach for physicians to convert Passives into enthusiastic Promoters.

Over the past several decades, research audiologists have created and validated an abundance of self-reports that measure a variety of patient-related outcomes, including hearing aid use time, benefit, satisfaction, and quality of life improvements that may be impacted by recommended interventions. Although the use of outcome measures has been recommended by opinion leaders for decades, their popularity among rank and file audiologists is low. According to survey data¹, less than 20% of clinicians routinely (“always” or “almost always”) administer any type of self-report of outcome. Why have outcome measures not been a part of audiology practices? Often, established outcome tools are too long or do not capture the audiologist’s needs at the practice or individual patient level. At the same time, the amount of operational effort to continue to engage patients is also seen as barrier.

Yet, as value-based care takes center stage, along with the move to over-the-counter hearing aids, there has never been a more important time to document patient outcomes and the audiologist’s role in achieving those outcomes. Broadly defined, outcome measures, now commonly known and PROM (Patient Reported Outcomes Measures) enable audiologists to quantify the effec-tiveness of their treatments. Different from verification procedures, which attempt to ensure that hearing aids are meeting a prescribed performance standard, a validated outcome measure answers the following questions:

• How did the recommended intervention affect the patient and their communication partners?

• How much did the recommended intervention improve the communication abilities of the individual?

• Were the goals, identified at the initial assessment appointment, successfully met?

As all healthcare professionals become more cognizant of increasing access to care, lowering costs of care, and improving the over-all quality of care, it is imperative for audiologists to identify ways to systematically and routinely measure a broad range of out-comes. Specifically, there are at least three reasons for popularizing the use of outcome measures within the profession of audiology:

• As healthcare becomes more consumer-driven, there is added emphasis on the individual’s point of view across time and across different modes of service delivery (e.g., face-to-face, telehealth, over-the-counter, etc.).

• Traditional lab measures, like soundfield audiometry, don’t capture everyday experiences. Real-world experiences cannot be accurately measured in the test booth or clinic.

• In an evidence-based practice model of care, the perceptions of the individual are the gold standard, and the use of well-designed self-reports allow for a comparison of outcomes across similar demographics.

The outcome of audiological intervention is multi-faceted and complex. No single self-report captures the wide array of possible outcomes of the patient experience. It is simply not feasible to measure all the dimensions of patient outcome with a short, easy to administer questionnaire. However, audiologists must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Outcome metrics experts recommend a short self-report, comprised of fewer than ten questions, that pulls questions from several existing outcome mea-sures already used by researchers in the field.

It is common for audiologists to encounter patients, with similar degrees of hearing loss, who are impacted differently by their condition. Persons with hearing loss experience their condition differently depending on the types of activities they engage in, their overall health, their role in society, and the environment in which they communicate.² Thus, outcome measures need to account for and respect these individual differences across patient populations.

These are among the main reasons some outcome metrics experts have chosen self-reports that attempt to go beyond hearing aid benefit and performance metrics to measure the impact that hearing loss (and treatment of it) has on the individual’s participa-tion in daily activities, including the limitations hearing loss may place on daily living.

Accompanying this brief article is a self-report (Figure 1) that has taken four questions from the International Classification of Functioning (ICF) Measure of Participation and Activities Screener³, two questions from the International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids (IOI-HA)⁴ and two additional questions that measure overall quality of support and the patient’s willingness to recommend hearing aids (and other similar treatment options) to family and friends.

As tele-audiology services and over-the-counter hearing aid sales become a part of the audiology landscape, this outcome mea-sure can be adapted to reflect these new modes of service delivery. Our goal is to encourage all audiologists to adopt this tool as a pre- and post-intervention metric for measuring the impact their treatment recommendations have on daily communication. By operationalizing this tool, audiologists can quickly and easily compare the results of each individual patient to similar demo-graphics. Thus, using data collected in their clinics to make better, more effective treatment decisions, which is a cornerstone of patient-centered care.

James Benson is the president and founder of QM2 Solutions, 900 Elm St, Peshtigo, WI 54157.
He can be contacted at jbenson@qm2solutions.com.

REFERENCES

Kirkwood, D. (2010) Survey probes dispensers’ views on key issues raised by Consumer Reports.

Hearing Journal. 63(5): 17-26.

International Classification of Functioning, Health and Disability: A potential service delivery model for audiological practice. Seminars in Hearing. Guest Editor; Mridula Sharma, August 2016

Meyer, C., Grenness, C., Scarinci, N., & Hickson, L. (2016). What Is the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health and Why Is It Relevant to Audiology?. Seminars in Hearing, 37(3), 163-86.

Cox RM., Alexander, GC. and Beyer CM.. (2003) Norms for the International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids. Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 14(8): 403-413.