31 Patient Survey Questions to Improve Healthcare Experience

2. Hospital Patient Experience Survey Questions

Sample questions

1. “During this hospital stay, how often did nurses explain things in a way you could understand?”
   Never / Sometimes / Usually / Always

2. “When you requested help, how often did you receive it as soon as you needed?”
   Never / Sometimes / Usually / Always / Did not request help

3. “How often was the area around your room quiet at night?”
   Never / Sometimes / Usually / Always

4. “How often did staff explain the purpose of a new medicine before giving it to you?”
   Never / Sometimes / Usually / Always / No new medicines

5. “What would have most improved your hospital stay?”
   Open text

Use these custom patient experience survey questions to build your hospital satisfaction survey template around staff responsiveness, understandable explanations, and the care environment. See these health care satisfaction survey questions for additional examples.

If you’re searching for Press Ganey questions, these examples are not official Press Ganey items, a validated instrument, or substitutes for required standardized surveys.

Plus, your patient feedback survey gives patients room to explain what scores miss. Even a quiet hallway deserves more than a gold star.

Why & When to Use

• Use patient experience surveys after inpatient stays to understand experiences across hospital services.

• Choose a consistent post-discharge survey window so you collect feedback at comparable points.

• Use results for unit-level improvement, accounting for patient mix and collection methods before comparing units.

Among 27,639 surveyed patients, nurse communication showed the strongest domain-level correlation with overall hospital experience (source).

3. Appointment Access and Scheduling Survey Questions

Sample questions

1. “How easy was it to contact the clinic to arrange care?”
   Very difficult / Difficult / Neither easy nor difficult / Easy / Very easy

2. “Were you able to get an appointment as soon as you needed?”
   Yes / No / Not sure

3. “Approximately how long did you wait after your scheduled appointment time before your visit began?”
   No wait / 1–15 minutes / 16–30 minutes / 31–60 minutes / More than 60 minutes

4. “Did you receive the assistance you needed to access the appointment?”
   Yes, fully / Yes, partly / No / Did not need assistance

5. “What made arranging or attending your appointment difficult?”
   Open text

Your patient experience survey should distinguish waiting for an appointment from waiting at an appointment. They’re different problems, even if both involve clock-watching.

Plus, use your patient feedback survey to explore phone, online, and in-person scheduling, alongside transportation, language, or accessibility support. Don’t assume everyone can book online or travel easily.

Why & When to Use

• Use patient experience surveys when you hear about scheduling difficulties, missed appointments, or long waits.

• Use feedback to guide staffing, appointment availability, contact options, and accessibility improvements.

• Reach beyond completed visits when possible: surveying only attendees may miss people who couldn’t obtain care.

4. Communication and Shared Decision-Making Survey Questions

Sample questions

1. “How clearly did your clinician explain your health condition?”
   Not at all clearly / Slightly clearly / Moderately clearly / Very clearly / Extremely clearly

2. “Did you have enough opportunity to ask questions?”
   Yes, definitely / Yes, somewhat / No

3. “When treatment choices were discussed, did your clinician explain their possible benefits and risks?”
   Yes, fully / Yes, partly / No / Treatment choices were not discussed

4. “Did your care team provide information in your preferred language?”
   Yes / No / Not applicable

5. “What information would have helped you better understand your care?”
   Open text

Your healthcare patient experience survey can reveal communication gaps that a friendly goodbye won’t catch. Medical jargon shouldn’t require a decoder ring.

Use this patient feedback survey module to explore plain-language explanations, interpretation needs, and patient involvement in decisions.

Plus, keep each patient experience survey question focused on one concept. Ask about listening, respect, and explanation quality separately.

Why & When to Use

• Use patient experience surveys after consultations involving diagnoses, treatment choices, or complex instructions.

• Let responses guide communication training, clearer patient information, and language support.

• Treat reported understanding as the patient’s perspective, not an objective test of clinical knowledge. Your patient experience questionnaire captures how clear care felt, not proof of comprehension.

A 1,341-participant study found CollaboRATE’s three questions distinguished levels of shared decision-making, supporting brief surveys assessing explanations and patient involvement (source).

5. Discharge and Care Coordination Survey Questions

Sample questions

1. “Before leaving, how clearly did staff explain what you should do next?”
   Not at all clearly / Slightly clearly / Moderately clearly / Very clearly / Extremely clearly

2. “Did you know whom to contact if you had questions after leaving?”
   Yes / No / Not sure

3. “Were you told which warning signs meant you should seek medical help?”
   Yes / No / Not applicable

4. “If follow-up care was recommended, did you receive the help you needed to arrange it?”
   Yes, fully / Yes, partly / No / No follow-up recommended

5. “What, if anything, was confusing about the transition to your next stage of care?”
   Open text

Your patient experience survey should cover transitions between hospitals, primary care, specialists, and community services. Care coordination shouldn’t feel like a relay race without a baton.

Ask separately about understanding instructions and successfully obtaining follow-up care. Knowing your next step isn’t the same as being able to take it.

Clearly state that your patient feedback survey is not a monitored channel for urgent medical concerns.

Why & When to Use

• Use patient experience surveys after discharge, referrals, or transfers between services.

• Allow enough time for patients to experience the transition before asking about follow-up access.

• Use findings to improve instructions, contact information, and referral coordination.

6. Telehealth Patient Experience Survey Questions

Sample questions

1. “How easy was it to join your video appointment or connect with your clinician by telephone?”
   Very difficult / Difficult / Neither easy nor difficult / Easy / Very easy

2. “Did technical problems interrupt your appointment?”
   No / Yes, briefly / Yes, substantially

3. “How comfortable did you feel discussing your health during this appointment?”
   Not at all comfortable / Slightly comfortable / Moderately comfortable / Very comfortable / Extremely comfortable

4. “Did the remote appointment meet your needs for this visit?”
   Fully / Partly / Not at all

5. “What would have improved your remote appointment?”
   Open text

Your patient experience survey should cover telephone and video visits, with wording matched to each format. A frozen screen deserves its own feedback, not your clinician’s entire review.

Keep technical reliability separate from care quality so your patient feedback survey captures both clearly.

Plus, include patient questions about privacy, accessibility, and format preferences. Ask whether patients could speak privately, access communication support, and discuss their concerns comfortably.

Why & When to Use

• Use patient experience surveys after remote visits or when evaluating your telehealth service.

• Use responses to identify connection support, accessibility needs, and situations patients feel need in-person care.

• Treat convenience and satisfaction as experience measures, not proof of clinical effectiveness.

7. Patient Survey Best Practices: Dos and Don’ts

Sample questions

1. “During your most recent visit, how often did your clinician explain things clearly?”
   Never / Sometimes / Usually / Always / Not applicable

2. “How easy was it to book your most recent appointment?”
   Very difficult / Difficult / Neither easy nor difficult / Easy / Very easy / Not applicable

Your patient experience survey should produce feedback you can act on, not give patients a second waiting room.

Dos

• Define the decision each question will inform.

• Use plain, neutral language and one concept per question.

• Specify a visit or clear recall period.

• Keep response scales consistent; offer “Not applicable” where relevant.

• Stay focused; test completion time with representative patients.

• Offer accessible formats and appropriate language options.

• Explain anonymity or confidentiality and how you’ll use feedback.

• Preserve official wording, administration rules, and scoring for standardized instruments.

Don’ts

• Don’t lead with “How excellent was your care?”

• Don’t combine multiple issues in one question.

• Don’t require answers patients cannot reasonably assess.

• Don’t collect unnecessary sensitive information.

• Don’t assume respondents represent every patient group.

• Don’t treat scores from different questions or methods as equivalent.

• Don’t substitute a custom patient experience questionnaire for mandated reporting.

• Don’t imply responses receive immediate clinical review.

Why & When to Use

Use these checks before launching or revising patient experience surveys.

Plus, revisit them when changing your patient feedback survey’s language, format, or delivery method so you can interpret results thoughtfully.

8. Turn Patient Survey Insights Into Measurable Improvements

Sample questions

1. How easy was it to book your most recent appointment?
   Very difficult / Difficult / Neither easy nor difficult / Easy / Very easy / Not applicable

2. What one change would have improved your experience at your most recent visit?

Your patient experience survey becomes useful when you turn feedback into accountable action, rather than giving another spreadsheet a comfortable retirement.

• Establish a baseline: Track responses, response rates, and recurring themes before you introduce changes.

• Find specific problems: Combine rating patterns with open-text patient feedback survey responses to distinguish isolated incidents from repeated issues.

• Check whose experiences are missing: Review representation across relevant patient groups, protect privacy, and avoid unreliable small-group comparisons.

• Prioritize action: Choose one or two improvements based on severity, frequency, equity, and feasibility.

• Assign accountability: Give each improvement an owner, a deadline, and a measurable outcome, such as shorter appointment waits.

• Close the feedback loop: Tell patients what you heard and changed without revealing individual responses.

• Measure again: Repeat the same core patient questions using comparable timing, delivery methods, and response scales.

Why & When to Use

Use this process after reviewing patient experience surveys and before planning service changes.

Plus, revisit your patient experience questionnaire after improvements to assess whether experiences changed.

Useful patient survey questions lead to specific improvements, not merely higher survey scores.

Turning Patient Survey Insights Into Action

The real value of a patient experience survey shows up when you use the answers to make care feel smoother, clearer, and more human.

Why & When to Use

This is the final step after sending a patient experience survey template, collecting responses, and reviewing your patient experience surveys. Here's the thing, data is helpful, but action is where the magic happens.

Start by looking for patterns in your patient feedback survey results. If the same complaint shows up again and again, like long waits, confusing billing, or rushed communication, you have a theme worth addressing.

Next, prioritize problems by frequency and impact. A small issue that appears constantly may deserve faster attention than a rare complaint, while one serious breakdown in care communication may need immediate action even if it appears less often.

A practical review process can look like this:

• Group comments into themes such as scheduling, staff courtesy, communication, billing, and follow-up

• Flag repeated concerns across multiple patient experience surveys

• Rank issues based on how often they appear and how strongly they affect care

• Turn findings into staff training, workflow updates, or clearer patient communication

• Review results again on a regular schedule to compare progress over time

Plus, share what changed because of patient questions and feedback. When patients see action from a patient care satisfaction survey, trust grows, loyalty improves, and your survey stops being a dusty suggestion box in a nicer outfit.