How to Develop a Patient Experience Questionnaire and What to Include

A patient experience survey needs three things to be effective:

1. Ask goal-driven questions that are properly worded.
2. Designed following best practices, applying the right logic and survey scales.
3. Sent at the right time to get objective answers, in the highest volume possible.

Unfortunately, many clinics fall prey to common mistakes: they use questions that introduce bias, collect data that no one can act on, or alienate respondents with medical jargon. 

This guide will show you how to avoid those pitfalls. The goal is to equip you to launch a PX survey that delivers useful data, rather than a dusty spreadsheet of half-answered questions.

What is a patient experience survey?

At its core, a patient-experience survey is a structured inquiry into patient perceptions: it asks patients to describe, in their own words and on standardized scales, what it felt like to navigate your service. 

Unlike a basic satisfaction poll, which simply measures mood, a PX survey disentangles the specific encounters that create that mood, giving you very specific levers to pull. Why bother? 

Here are a few reasons:

• Operational clarity: You discover where queues form, which explanations confuse, and which touchpoints wow.
• Regulatory alignment: Insurers and accreditation bodies increasingly tie reimbursement to demonstrated quality-of-care metrics.
• Competitive edge: In many urban markets, the next clinic is literally across the street. Superior patient experience becomes your cheapest marketing channel.

A robust questionnaire should explore, at minimum:

• Access & scheduling (speed, flexibility, digital options)
• Physical environment (cleanliness, comfort, signage, parking)
• Staff interactions (courtesy, empathy, clarity of roles)
• Communication & information (test-result transparency, treatment explanations)
• Wait times & flow (before the visit, between stages, aftercare follow-up)
• Clinical outcomes perception (did the treatment help, side-effects clarity)
• Billing & financial clarity (cost estimates, payment options, surprise fees)
• Overall advocacy (likelihood to recommend, net promoter score)

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to measuring patient experience. The secret is capturing timely and precise data with minimal bias, combining the narrative nuance of qualitative responses with the benchmark power of quantitative metrics.

Typical patient experience survey questions to include

While the broad themes above stay constant, the exact thing that each clinic will want to ask can be quite different. 

For example: 

• A fertility clinic must probe feelings around confidentiality and hope. 
• A dermatology practice needs to know whether post-procedure instructions were clear enough to prevent scarring. 
• A dental office lives or dies by perceptions of pain management. 

Tailoring language to the stakes of each specialty boosts both completion rates and actionability.

To streamline the process, InsiderCX has a continuously updated question bank vetted by real-world experience and applications. It contains more than 400 items spanning a range of specialties, framed by regulatory requirements and written for a wide range of applications.

We have pulled the following examples from that question bank. You can access the complete list of patient experience survey questions here.

1) Appointment & scheduling:

• How easy was it to secure an appointment at a convenient time? [5-point Likert scale]
• Which booking method did you use? [Multiple choice]

2) Staff-related questions:

• Did the clinical staff treat you with courtesy and respect? [Yes/No]
• Please describe one thing our staff could have done better today. [Open-ended]

3) Treatment & medical experience:

• How clearly were the steps of your treatment or procedure explained to you? [5-point Likert scale]
• Did you experience any unexpected pain or side-effects during or after treatment? [Yes/No]

4) Doctor-related questions:

• How confident did you feel in the doctor’s expertise regarding your condition? [5-point Likert scale]
• Did the doctor give you adequate time to ask questions? [Yes/No]

5) General care questions:

• How well were your comfort needs (water, blanket, privacy) met during the visit? [5-point Likert scale]
• Which of the following support resources did you use or receive? [Multiple choice]

6) Clinic environment & facilities:

• How would you rate the cleanliness of examination and waiting areas? [5-point Likert scale]
• How easy was it to navigate the building and find the correct department? [5-point Likert scale]

7) Service improvement suggestions:

• What single change would most improve your experience with our clinic? [Open-ended]
• Which additional service would you value most if we introduced it? [Multiple choice]

8) General comments:

• Please share any other observations about your visit. [Open-ended]
• Is there anything we should have asked but didn’t? [Open-ended]

9) Overall satisfaction & future intent: 

• Overall, how satisfied are you with your experience today? [5-point Likert scale]
• How likely are you to return to or recommend our clinic to others? [0–10 Net Promoter Score]

Remember: these are just examples — you should adapt wording, add context cues, and test locally. It is a process we go through with each new clinic that uses the InsiderCX platform to collect and analyze patient feedback.

How to develop an effective patient experience questionnaire

Creating a PX survey is deceptively tricky because you must balance statistical rigor with being approachable and concise. Here is a proven six-step framework InsiderCX uses when onboarding new clients.

Step 1: Define your goals

Begin with a single question: “What decision will this data inform?” Everything else flows from that. 

If you aim to verify whether a new self-check-in kiosk reduces lobby congestion, you need granular timestamps and comparative baselines. If you want to benchmark bedside manner across pediatricians, you need items that assess empathy and child communication. 

In other words, objectives dictate:

• Scope: Does your survey cover the entire patient journey or a single procedure?
• Sampling frame: Should the PX survey be sent to all patients or just a certain subgroup or demographic?
• Timing: Should the survey be sent out immediately after the visit/procedure, or do you need to wait for 30+ days to measure outcomes and follow-ups?

Document the goal in a two-sentence charter. That will keep later stakeholders from adding pet questions that bloat the survey.

Step 2: Choose your question types and survey scales

A well-designed patient experience survey feels conversational yet outputs machine-readable data. 

Likert scales are great for tracking change over time and for dashboards, but make sure you stick to one direction (1 = Poor → 5 = Excellent). Open-ended text responses are great at surfacing unanticipated issues, but require natural-language processing to mine systematically.

We recommend picking one primary numeric scale — 5-point is common because respondents rarely discern meaningful shades beyond five — and sticking to it throughout the survey. Changing scales dilute insight and hinder your year-on-year and month-to-month comparisons.

Common missteps to avoid:

• Double-barrelled questions: “Was the waiting area comfortable and clean?”; split these into two separate questions.
• Absolutes: Words like always or never force extremes.
• Obscure medical acronyms: If a term is vital, accompany it with a simple explanation.

To dive deeper, check out our knowledge base:

• PX survey question types
• PX survey scales

Lastly, try to keep the total length under seven minutes. Industry studies show completion rates fall off a cliff after minute eight. InsiderCX’s identity management means you can omit demographics that are already on file, shaving 20 percent off survey length.

Step 3: Ensure clarity and neutrality

Draft each question, then interrogate it:

• Clarity: Can someone with an 11-year-old reading age paraphrase it correctly?
• Neutrality: Does the wording subtly praise your clinic? Replace “state-of-the-art equipment” with “medical equipment.”
• Cultural fit: Would the phrasing resonate equally with a 70-year-old retiree and a 22-year-old graduate student?

Run the draft through a plain-language checker, then run it through two focus groups: one internal (front-desk staff, nurses) and one external (patients or laypersons). Note where eyebrows rise.

Step 4: Choose the delivery method for your patient experience surveys

Paper forms excel in elder-care settings but require manual data entry. Kiosks work for quick thumbs-up/down checks at exit doors, but can’t reach patients once they leave. Telephone interviews elicit richer stories but cost more per response. Mobile-optimised links — delivered via SMS or email — balance reach with low friction.

We recommend mobile surveys — sent via SMS or WhatsApp. In our experience, they are the easiest to scale and typically have the highest response rates.

As a sidenote, here are some accessibility tips to keep in mind:

• Use contrast ratios compliant with WCAG 2.1
• Implement screen-reader-friendly alt text for images
• Font size ≥ 16 px on mobile.

If you are using InsiderCX, we handle those concerns for you.

Step 5: Pilot your patient experience questionnaire

A pilot is mandatory, not optional. Soft-launch to 50–100 patients over a fortnight. Track three things:

• Completion rate at question level (where do drop-offs spike?)
• Time needed to complete the survey (median should sit under seven minutes)
• Qualitative feedback (“Question 4 felt repetitive.”).

Iterate, and then rerun. Release broadly only when completion exceeds 60 percent and item wording passes comprehension checks (and note that we’re being generous with the completion margin; the quoted number is not ideal, just “good enough”).

Clinics that use our help to design PX questionnaires and automate the collection process consistently see 20%+ open rates and 80%+ completion rates.

Step 6: Analyze results and take action

Raw numbers will mean little without context: segment first by visit type, provider, or location, then search for:

• Trends: Week-over-week upticks in specific issues.
• Outliers: A single clinician has empathy scores two standard deviations above peers? Invite them to share techniques!
• Quick wins: If 40 percent of detractors cite confusing parking signage, fix the signs before redesigning the workflow.

Crucially, close the loop. Within a month of survey launch, publish a “You said, we did” posters on your website and waiting-room screens.

Clinics that broadcast follow-through see upticks in both response volume and overall ratings in subsequent quarters.

Use InsiderCX as your patient experience survey tool

Collecting feedback is only half the equation — deriving insight at speed is the other half. InsiderCX stitches those halves together with a platform purpose-built for healthcare.

How do we do it? Here’s a quick breakdown:

• Automated, multilingual, white-label surveys that mirror your brand and routinely secure response rates above benchmarks — even in hard-to-reach demographics.
• Hands-on help and advice from our experts to help design, write, and set up all of your surveys.
• Real-time sentiment analysis flags recurring pain points and emergent issues (e.g., sudden complaints about pharmacy wait times) before they hit social media.
• Instant detractor alerts route negative feedback directly to the relevant manager’s inbox, enabling same-day remediation calls.
• Custom dashboards that surface macro trends — compare doctor-level empathy scores or procedure-specific pain-control ratings — while letting you export data for all your reporting or analysis needs.
• Weekly intelligence briefs summarise statistically significant movements, ensuring leadership can track the ROI of changes without drowning in raw data.

Great care starts with great listening!

Schedule a demo with the InsiderCX team to see how surveys — designed, deployed, and decoded by experts — convert patient voices into operational improvements. That’s how you get five-star reviews.