BHG Earns High Marks on First Net Promoter Score
By Julie Koenig, RN/COO and Tricia Cross, MS/Senior Clinical & Operations Analyst
Congratulations and a huge thank-you are in order… to all of you! For the first time in BHG’s history, we conducted the Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey and received a great overall score of 60, a rare and high score for the healthcare industry which is currently averaging 38.[i] According to Customer Guru NPS Benchmarks, our score is also higher than many of the world’s leading brands like Apple and Target. Even more remarkable is that 5,500 patients responded with these good results during the pandemic and our growth which stretched us all to our limits. The survey started this past February and ran for six weeks.
What is the Net Promoter Score?
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customer experience and predicts business growth. NPS data can be obtained by asking a simple question: How likely would you be to recommend a practice to a friend or family member? On a scale of 1 to 10, anyone who answered with a 9 and 10 would be considered a promoter of the business. Anyone with 8 or below is a detractor. The difference between an organization’s promoters and detractors is the NPS score, which can range from -100 on the low end to positive 100 on the high end.[ii]
| Needs Improvement | Good | Great | Excellent |
| -100 – 0 | 0-30 | 30-70 | 70-100 |
A special shout out goes to our Patient Registration colleagues who scored nearly 95% across the board in professionalism and accessibility. As the first point of contact, their role was elevated this past year because of the vital part they play in the patient experience with an emphasis on having a calm demeanor that puts patients at ease while ensuring all personal data and information is accurately being collected at the front end of their journey so that “paperwork” and billing doesn’t disrupt care and Revenue Cycle Management (RCM).
Our Top 5 Regional Net Promoter Scores
| Region | NPS |
| So VA | 76.22 |
| Cen TN | 69.78 |
| NC/SC | 64.87 |
| LA/GA/FL | 64.75 |
| KY | 62.39 |
Patient satisfaction vs. patient loyalty
Good hospitals work on their NPS all the time. At my previous job, it was very difficult to get a score this high. Satisfied patients can mean more positive outcomes which is good for business in a revenue sense. But even more important to our bottom line is patient loyalty. Satisfaction is largely based on expectations whereas loyalty relates to how likely a person is to repeat business and recommend us to someone else. To dive a little deeper into satisfaction versus loyalty and how NPS is rolled out and results are measured, check out this Healthcare Finance story. All of this is very timely as we model the industry standard for addiction recovery and treatment, expand services and fine-tune our Revenue Cycle Management.
Speaking of loyalty, people are coming to us during the most difficult and vulnerable times in their lives. To see that 98% of patients say we have improved their quality of life is remarkable. I truly believe they have a loyal connection to us because of the way you all lead with care and compassion. We’re considering doing the NPS twice a year and as we do so, we’ll be iterating the survey to ask more around engagement and loyalty.
I also want to thank our marketing and technology teams for helping us make the survey easy to access. We placed signs promoting the NPS survey at each treatment center where patients could hold their phones up to a QR code or request a link to the survey via text.
Learn more and let us know
Creating a good patient experience can be difficult on many levels in our industry. I think Dr. Nordstrom said it best. “This is a hard area of healthcare. The fact that you all come into work every day to help people fight addiction…it can be incredibly heartbreaking, but incredibly heartwarming.”
We were already proud of everyone’s unstoppable commitment to patient care as COVID-19 shut the world down, but this score is a positive indicator that BHG is on the right path to moving our mission forward of restoring lives, strengthening families and rejuvenating communities.
We appreciate all that you do. We would love for you to share any ideas and patient feedback that would be beneficial to how we can continue making BHG a place where real recovery happens.
To see the full NPS presentation, you can find it on SharePoint here.
[i] The Retently 2021 NPS Benchmark shows the healthcare industry with an average NPS of 38.
[ii] Healthcare Finance, May 2020, 9th paragraph – https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/how-improving-patient-experience-through-net-promoter-scores-can-improve-outcomes-boost-revenue
