UW dental school installs PatSat to measure patient satisfaction

Feb 16, 2010

The University of Washington (UW) School of Dentistry has selected PatSat, a quality measurement tool developed by Dentra, to measure and monitor patient satisfaction in real-time. UW is the first dental school to join Dentra's University PatSat Network.

Aimed to serve as an outcome assessment tool for the school's entire clinical department, PatSat is an online satisfaction measurement application that enables dental patients to provide feedback about their experience after each visit by answering a short survey.

The dental school will use PatSat to collect and process satisfaction data daily and deliver easy-to-read benchmark reports and dashboards that faculty and students can consult at any time via an easily accessible online portal.

PatSat works with the school's axiUm practice management system, making it easy to generate daily lists of treated patients, prepopulate, and automatically send e-mail invitations to individual satisfaction surveys, Dentra said.

"We are currently working on establishing quality standards within our faculty, and PatSat is a product that can meet our specific needs," said Daniel Chan, D.M.D., M.S., D.D.S., associate dean of clinical services at the dental school, in a press release. "The solution will not only supply all providers access to their own patient feedback so they can improve their performance, it will also play a key role in supporting the quality improvement culture in our school."

"Just as healthcare came to use outcomes and analytics to look for and define best practices in quality care delivery, it is now an opportune time for dentistry to embrace and move toward transparency with regards to quality measurement," added Amanda Twiss, Dentra's president and CEO. "Dentra's mission is to help the dental profession establish industry-wide quality measurement standards and practices by providing best-in-class technology, analytics, and expertise for oral healthcare delivery excellence."