What is Community Advisor, and how does it improve healthcare?

As the healthcare landscape continues to expand, organizations are increasingly turning to the insights of patients, families, and communities to drive improvements. By gathering insights directly from those who experience care firsthand, organizations and their providers can better understand patient needs, preferences, and challenges. This feedback, collected through surveys, focus groups, and other engagement tools, offers a clearer picture of what patients truly value, helping healthcare organizations make more informed decisions. Involving the community in shaping care leads to more personalized, patient-centered services and fosters stronger relationships between healthcare providers and the populations they serve.

How does Press Ganey’s Community Advisor work?

Community Advisor is a solution that provides healthcare organizations with valuable insights into the experiences of patients, families, and community members. By leveraging a combination of real-time feedback, crowdsourcing, digital communities, and discussions (our digital focus groups), Community Advisor fosters deeper engagement and improves healthcare outcomes. This multi-faceted approach goes beyond traditional crowdsourcing, offering a rich, qualitative listening experience that enables healthcare leaders to understand the nuances of patient needs, preferences, and concerns. By tapping into a variety of community-driven insights, Community Advisor helps healthcare organizations make informed decisions that resonate with diverse populations and drive meaningful improvements.

Getting real-time feedback from patients and their families

Community Advisor’s technology pulls the pieces together, giving healthcare organizations instant access to feedback through several channels:

• Contact database: Recruit, manage, and segment the community to more completely understand each demographic's specific needs.
• Digital surveys: Capture direct feedback on the patient experience and key improvement initiatives through digital surveys that can be delivered via email, text, or even QR codes.
• Discussions (digital focus groups): Solicit deeper qualitative insights, giving healthcare organizations a clearer understanding of patient motivations, challenges, and emotions.
• Digital communities: Tap into patient and community feedback in an ongoing, digital, and more social format, similar to social media platforms, providing a more organic, continuous flow of feedback.
• Crowdsourcing: Source ideas from the community and allow users to vote and rank to truly get at the heart of what matters.
• Expert guidance: Refine your strategies and optimize your approaches to improving care and patient experiences with input from specialized advisors, who have deep patient experience expertise.

What are the benefits of Community Advisor?

Involving the community in efforts to improve healthcare has several significant advantages. For one, by actively engaging diverse populations, healthcare organizations gain valuable insights into what matters most to the people they serve. This lets them better tailor care and services to meet the unique needs of each demographic or segment, fostering more positive outcomes. 

As a healthcare organization grows and evolves, community involvement also strengthens the connections between it and the individuals seeking care. Simplifying the process of gathering feedback encourages ongoing communication and collaboration, creating a dynamic feedback loop where patient needs are better understood and more quickly addressed. Ultimately, this partnership improves patient experiences, builds trust, and cultivates long-term loyalty, benefiting both the community and the organization.

What are the key features of Community Advisor?

Quantitative and qualitative feedback tools, like surveys, focus groups, and online communities, help healthcare organizations listen more closely to gain a deeper understanding of patient preferences and expectations. This insight then informs decisions that drive meaningful, sustainable improvements.

What are some examples of different applications of Community Advisor?

Community Advisor plays a vital role in shaping healthcare initiatives, serving as a bridge between healthcare organizations and the populations they serve. It’s designed around flexibility, enabling it to meet the unique needs and use cases of different organizations. A key part of its value is its ability to collaborate with clients to understand their specific goals and areas of interest. By working closely with organizations, we tailor the Community Advisor solution to gather targeted feedback on topics that matter most to them. This adaptability ensures that the solution is aligned with the client's priorities and can evolve as those needs change.

For example, Community Advisor can help gather feedback on new facilities or services, ensuring they align with community needs. This kind of input helps organizations prioritize and co-design patient-centered programs that enhance care. Press Ganey’s Community Advisor can also be used to capture insights from diverse patient populations, ensuring their voices are heard. By identifying and addressing health disparities in this way, our solution improves communication and engagement, fostering trust and collaboration with communities to strengthen healthcare relationships and drive better outcomes.

How to get your healthcare organization started with Community Advisor

Getting started with Community Advisor is simple. Learn more about the solution here, or get in touch with us today to learn more about Press Ganey’s Community Advisor, and how it can help you improve healthcare within your community.