Short surveys are intended to provide just enough simple and prompt feedback to tell you whether your attempts to improve are going in the right direction. Teams can also use them to pinpoint certain areas of interest (i.e., did the patients find the new form easy to understand?). These surveys are useful for answering question 2 in the Model for Improvement (How will we know that a change is an improvement?) and in running Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles.

Using short surveys has a variety of benefits:

• They are less expensive than large-scale surveys.
• They provide immediate feedback, permitting rapid completion of PDSA cycles and rapid learning.
• They are easy to use.
• They allow segmenting of a population (e.g., only diabetic patients) or a process (e.g., only those using the services of a new outpatient lab).
• They yield a higher return rate if administered real time (e.g., given to the patient/family and having them complete it at that time, rather than mailing surveys or calling at a later time).

Developed for IHI’s "Methods and Tools for Breakthrough Improvement" course, the short survey has been used by hundreds of health care organizations.

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