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Create your survey

Create your survey

Best questions for patient survey about wait times

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Adam Sabla

·

Aug 20, 2025

Create your survey

Here are some of the best questions for a patient survey about wait times, plus practical tips to help you craft an effective survey. If you want to build your own patient wait times survey in seconds, you can use Specific to generate one instantly.

Best open-ended questions for a patient survey about wait times

We love using open-ended questions because they let patients share real experiences, not just pick from a list. Open-ended questions help us understand the “why” behind their feelings—and that’s gold when you want to improve your practice or facility. They're especially valuable if you want details, stories, or suggestions straight from the source. For instance, research highlights how **longer wait times strongly decrease patient satisfaction**, regardless of other care aspects [1]. So, digging into that context with open questions is crucial.

  1. Can you describe your most recent experience with wait times during your visit?

  2. How did the waiting period affect your overall mood or perception of the care you received?

  3. If you experienced delays, what information (if any) was provided to explain the reason?

  4. What, if anything, could have made your wait more comfortable or less frustrating?

  5. Were there any moments when you felt your time was not respected? Please share details.

  6. How did the staff communicate with you during your wait?

  7. What could we do to improve our waiting experience for you and other patients?

  8. Can you share an example of a time when you felt satisfied (or dissatisfied) with how we handled your wait?

  9. Has a long wait time ever led you to reconsider coming back to our clinic? Tell us your thoughts.

  10. If you had a magic wand, what would you change about our wait times or waiting process?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for a patient survey about wait times

Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when we want to measure or compare. They make it quick for someone to respond, and give us quantitative data we can track over time. They also help start conversations—if a patient chooses “too long,” that’s a natural prompt for a followup question. Plus, they’re less intimidating than a blank text field.

Question: How long did you wait before seeing your healthcare provider today?

  • Less than 10 minutes

  • 11–20 minutes

  • 21–30 minutes

  • Over 30 minutes

Question: How satisfied were you with the amount of time you spent waiting?

  • Very satisfied

  • Somewhat satisfied

  • Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied

  • Somewhat dissatisfied

  • Very dissatisfied

Question: Which aspect of the waiting experience was most frustrating?

  • Lack of communication or updates

  • Uncomfortable seating/environment

  • Delays in appointment start

  • Other

When to follow up with "why?" When a patient says they’re dissatisfied, always dig deeper. Ask “why?” to uncover whether it was the actual length of wait, the environment, lack of updates, or something else. For example, if someone selects “very dissatisfied,” follow up with, “Can you tell us what made the wait most frustrating for you?”

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Include “Other” when you can't predict every possible answer. Patients might have issues you didn’t consider, and followup questions here often reveal unexpected themes or actionable insights.

Using NPS to measure satisfaction with wait times

NPS, or Net Promoter Score, measures how likely someone is to recommend your clinic/facility to others. It’s a strong signal of loyalty and satisfaction—and highly relevant to wait times, since **prolonged waits drive frustration and can influence whether patients recommend you or return themselves** [2]. NPS questions are simple for patients to answer and powerful for tracking trends over time. Want to create an NPS survey focused on wait times? Jump right in with our NPS survey builder.

The power of follow-up questions

Automated follow-up questions are a game changer. Instead of getting superficial or vague answers, smart AI follow-ups (like those in Specific) encourage deeper conversations. They clarify, probe, and adapt in real time, just like the best human interviewers, making the feedback far richer and more useful.

  • Patient: “I had to wait too long.”

  • AI follow-up: “I’m sorry to hear your wait was long. Can you tell us how the wait impacted your visit, or what could have made it better?”

This can prevent us from missing important details—especially since studies show every 10-minute increase in wait time decreases patient satisfaction significantly [2].

How many followups to ask? In general, 2–3 follow-ups per question are enough. With Specific, we can set an upper limit and allow skipping to the next question once we’ve got a useful answer, so it never feels repetitive or annoying.

This makes it a conversational survey—not a cold, lifeless form. Asking follow-ups in real time feels like chatting with a real person, and respondents stay engaged.

AI survey response analysis is easy, too. Even if feedback comes as free text, AI can quickly summarize and highlight the main themes. If you’re curious how that works, try our AI survey analysis tool for patient survey data.

Automated AI follow-ups are still new for many teams—try creating a survey and see how much deeper your insights go.

How to prompt ChatGPT for better patient survey questions

The right prompt brings much better results from ChatGPT or any large language model. Here’s the simplest way to start:

Ask this first prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for patient survey about wait times.

But don’t stop there. Giving more context yields better outputs. For example, if your clinic caters to working professionals, or you want feedback on communication specifics, say so:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for a patient survey about wait times. Our audience is mostly working adults. We want to know how delays impact their experience and what kind of communication they expect while waiting.

To organize your questions further, prompt the AI to group them into categories. Try:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Once you see the categories, decide which are most important (e.g., Communication, Comfort, Perceived Value). To dive deep, use:

Generate 10 questions for the category “Communication during wait times”.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey uses AI to mimic a natural conversation—respondents feel like they're chatting with a helpful, context-aware host, rather than filling a bland online form. Unlike manual survey creation, which can be slow and limited by your own time and expertise, AI survey generators like Specific instantly suggest smart, relevant questions, personalize the flow, and ask follow-ups on the fly.

Manual Approach

AI-Generated Surveys

Static set of questions; respondent's context often ignored

Dynamically adapts to respondent’s answers for richer insight

Time consuming to design, test, analyze; results hard to interpret

Quick survey creation; AI summarizes responses and trends instantly

Limited follow-up unless manually scripted

Smart, contextual follow-ups driven by AI

Easy for patients to disengage, lower completion rates

Feels like a conversation, improving participation and data quality

Why use AI for patient surveys? AI-powered survey examples perform better, with higher response rates and clearer, more actionable insights—especially for difficult topics like wait times. The AI survey builder in Specific takes care of wording, structure, logic, and even interprets results so you can focus on improvement instead of wrestling with spreadsheets.

We’re passionate about making feedback easy, actionable, and even enjoyable for both patients and staff. If you want to dig into the details of creating an effective survey, we recommend our step-by-step guide on how to create a patient survey about wait times.

See this wait times survey example now

Ready to improve patient satisfaction and reduce wait time complaints? Take action now—AI-powered, conversational surveys reveal insights traditional forms just can’t touch. Specific lets you launch, analyze, and refine surveys effortlessly, engaging every patient and maximizing feedback quality.

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Sources

  1. BMC Health Services Research. The association of waiting time with patient satisfaction in outpatient clinics.

  2. Duke University Department of Neurosurgery. Measuring the impact of waiting on patient satisfaction.

  3. Becker's Hospital Review. 9 statistics on wait times and patient satisfaction.

  4. Journal of Patient Experience. Wait times and patient satisfaction in ambulatory care settings.

Adam Sabla - Image Avatar

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.