Patient Satisfaction Survey Report 2023

•  80.65% of participants answered Very Good when asked how easy it is to get their treatments. 16.13% answered Good, with only one person answering Poor.
• 83.87% of participants found the time it took to get their prescriptions approved Very Good, while 16.3% found it Good. Overall, this means almost 100% of customers who took the survey were satisfied with how easy it was to choose a treatment, and how quickly their prescriptions were approved.
• When answering how easy it was to pay for treatments, 60% answered Very Good, and 40% answered Good.
• 67% of customers felt we were Very Good at having the right medication in stock. 16.13% answered Good, and 9.68% (three people) felt we were Poor in this area. One person answered Very Poor.

As an online healthcare service, we understand the importance of accessibility. Our site is designed with convenience in mind. We want our customers to feel like getting the treatments they need is a hassle-free, smooth experience, and these results reflect that.

Ideally, we would want the response to every survey question to be ‘Very good’, but we realise there are some areas we can improve upon. We value honesty, and we publish our survey results to be completely transparent.

We appreciate how frustrating it can be when our patients can’t get the treatments they want, especially if it’s a medication they use regularly. We always try to keep customers informed about stock issues, and offer suitable alternatives where possible. In future, we can look more closely at long-term means of managing our stock to ensure our patients avoid disappointment.

Our subscription model for many conditions means that we can anticipate when medications will be needed in advance, and make preparations for this where possible. When stocks run out at supply level however, and we can’t source a medication, we try to offer the closest available alternative. (This is why we try to have as big a formulary as possible, so there’s always an alternative where one exists.)

While stocks at supply level are often out of our control, we’ll continue to focus on the variables that we can control – and that’s maintaining close correspondence with suppliers, being as organised as possible with advance orders for refills, and adding as many treatment alternatives as possible to our formulary.

We asked patients if they’d received advice about stopping smoking, eating a healthy diet or getting physical exercise. For each of these three answers, over 80% of participants answered No.

We also asked customers how they rated us on giving advice about a current health problem, giving advice about living a healthier lifestyle, disposing of medicines they no longer need, and giving advice about health services available elsewhere. For each answer, the majority of participants (39%-60%) answered Never used, while the rest felt we did either Well or Very well (27%-58%), with one person answering Not very well  for each point.

Previously, we offered general lifestyle advice (pertaining to being a healthy weight, diet, exercise, smoking and alcohol consumption) to the majority of patients going through a consultation based on their answers. We’ve reviewed these processes since, trying to be more targeted with health advice where possible, so that we aren’t giving advice where it isn’t needed (or explicitly requested).

With this in mind, these questions might need rephrasing on future surveys. Our clinicians are always on hand to give patients professional advice about our treatments, and suggestions for improving their health. However, this advice might not be relevant to all patients, depending on the condition they’re looking to treat.

Another similar question asked patients if they received the right amount of information about their condition, the treatment they chose, or the care given to them:

• 87.1 % of patients felt they did have the right amount.
• 12.9% of survey participants felt like they didn’t.

Our website contains detailed information about all of the conditions we treat. Each product page explains how our medications work. This includes frequently asked questions about dosages, how to take the treatment, and a link to the patient information leaflet (PIL) that comes with all our medications. But not all patients see the product page before they go through the consultation – and the information they’re presented with at the point of selecting a treatment on our offer page only contains a fraction of that presented on our product page.

In future, we can review how we check if our patients are satisfied with the information they receive throughout their treatment plan. We’ll look at reviewing the information on the ‘Read more’ section of each product card on the offer page, to see if the information here could be holistic, rather than being just a summary of the first section of the product page. Overall, though, the majority of our patients felt they had all the information they needed.

All of our clinicians are fully licensed — our doctors are registered with the General Medical Council (GMC) and our pharmacists are registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC). They have a wealth of experience in treating different conditions and recommending medications that are tailored to patients personally. We want this expertise to be reflected in the experiences of our customers.

When asked about having confidence in our clinicians and in the decisions being made for them:

• 74.2% of respondents answered Yes, always
• 22.5% answered Yes, to some extent
• 3.2% answered No

When asked if they felt involved as much as they wanted to be in decisions about their care and treatments:

• 74.2% of survey respondents answered Yes, definitely
• 25.8% answered Yes, to some extent
  and 0% answered No

Online healthcare is growing, and has come a long way in the last 15 years. But the safety of providers can vary, and regulation around the industry is still evolving. As an established provider, our mission is to lead from the front, innovating new ways to deliver online healthcare safely, while empowering patients to have as much autonomy as possible.

The results show that the majority of participants felt confident in the decisions we made on their behalf, and that most of our customers felt as involved as they wanted to be during their treatment plan. For patients who only felt they were involved in care decisions ‘to some extent’, we will look into ways we can improve the back-and-forth relationship between them and the clinicians overseeing their care.

We asked our customers if they had complained while using our service. 90.3% answered No, and 9.7% answered Yes.

When asked if they were given the right information about how to complain to us or if they could see information about how to do this anywhere, 12.90% of participants answered Yes,  41.94% answered No, and 45.16% answered Not sure/Don’t know.

Our service is built around clear, effective communication. Patients can contact us through our messaging service, at any time – this allows them to flag issues with their prescriber, such as changing delivery dates, pausing or cancelling their subscriptions, or trying alternative treatments.

Along with our terms and conditions, privacy policy and FAQs, our website also includes our complaints policy, which outlines the different ways we can resolve concerns.

Shortly after our patients place an order, we email them to remind them how our service works. This email includes the different ways they can contact us should they need to — phoning us, emailing us, or messaging us through their accounts are all ways our customers can give us feedback. We also invite everyone who uses Treated to share their experiences through review platform Yotpo.

We’ll reword this question in future surveys, to specifically ask those patients who wanted to complain if they could find out clearly how to do so. If the means of contacting us to register complaints is being missed by our patients throughout their treatment plan, we can look at ways to make this more prominent. If customers are fully aware of the different ways they can let us know they have a problem, it can help us avoid complaints altogether.

We asked our customers how they rate Treated overall, taking their experiences of our service and staff into account.

• 61.29% answered Very good.
• 32.26% answered Good.

One person felt our service was Poor, and one felt we were Very poor overall.

Going forward, we’ll work hard to ensure none of our patients have a poor experience during their treatment plan with us. We take all conditions seriously, and we feel the same about negative feedback. By recognising early on if our customers aren’t satisfied with our level of care, we can respond promptly to ensure their needs are met.

The majority of people (19) we surveyed felt they had a Very good experience using Treated. Combined with the (10) people who felt their experience was Good, almost 94% of patients who took the survey had a positive experience.

We’ll continue to review our service, and look closely at all of the aspects we feel can be improved.