Gallup study shows clinics know how to ‘Take Care’

CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. —Take Care Health Systems, which is owned by Walgreens, built its retail-based clinics around a patient-centric model, and the success of that model is evident in the results of recent Gallup research.

The research on customers and customer engagement found that Take Care Clinics ranked among the top 10% of all organizations that Gallup measures globally in engaging their patients and customers. The research is based on a measure of customer engagement Gallup has developed that quantifies the strength and nature of a customer’s connection to a company. Gallup’s metric assesses the emotional bonds of confidence, integrity, pride and passion that reflect a company’s customer relationships. Gallup has found that without a strong emotional bond, satisfaction is meaningless.

The data found:

Take Care Clinics received the highest satisfaction ratings from more than 9-out-of-every-10 patients, compared with the typical company in Gallup’s database that receives the highest satisfaction from just 1-in-every-3 customers;

More than 9-out-of-every-10 patients strongly felt that the nurse practitioner or physician assistant spent enough time with them, and a similar number strongly felt that the nurse practitioner or physician assistant carefully listened to them and explained things in a way that was easy to understand; and

Take Care Clinics strongly engaged more than 3-outof-every-4 patients. The typical company in Gallup’s database strongly engages less than 1-in-5 customers.

The results of the study are important for several reasons. In today’s consumer-driven healthcare environment, simply satisfying a patient is not enough. Patients want to feel a personal connection; they want to be engaged. Furthermore, the role of retail-based clinics will become increasingly important since healthcare reform means that about 30 million people who currently are uninsured will have health-care coverage, and this comes against the backdrop of a physician shortage and overflowing emergency rooms.

The opinions of more than 50,000 Take Care Clinic patient respondents have been captured to date via on-site kiosks at more than 350 clinic locations. Gallup validated these results through a nationwide, random outbound phone study. Results of that study indicated that the on-site kiosk data provided an accurate portrait of Take Care Clinics’ patient-engagement performance.