I could spend all day long participating in phone surveys. So, I don’t usually do any. More and more the surveyors are offering some incentive like a gift certificate or a donation to the hospital’s foundation. I appreciate that they value my time, but that generally isn’t going to change my mind.

I participated in a HIMSS Analytics survey today. This is the first survey that I have been subjected to in over a year. I consider HIMSS Analytics to be a respectable name, but this was a disaster. The surveyor had no understanding of the topic and had a difficult time reading her script. Worse, the questions were very poorly constructed.

They asked me which database platforms I used (SQL Server and MEDITECH MAGIC). Then they proceeded to ask me to rank other DBMS platforms on a number of different criteria (reliability, manageability, performance, etc.). Well, I don’t use those – so why would I have an opinion? The survey also asked me to rate the DBMS of my top three clinical applications. These are all MEDITECH applications so I answered the same questions three times.

I suspect that the survey was sponsored, I would guess by Cache.

One third of the way into the survey I lost respect for the methodology and began answering questions while reading email. That survey won’t be worth the paper it is printed on.

One more thought about surveys, I would much rather complete an online survey than a phone based survey.