How to collect feedback from elderly patients without an app (even if they avoid technology)

You can collect feedback from elderly patients without an app: a plain web link – sent by text or printed as a QR code – opens a simple page where they tap a star, with nothing to download, no account and no password. Even patients who avoid technology mostly manage one tap on a familiar text message, and for the rest, family members and paper fill the gap. Here is how to make each route genuinely usable.

The app was the problem, not the patient

When an older patient “can’t do the review thing”, the obstacle is almost never the opinion – it is the obstacle course: install an app, create an account, verify an email, remember a password. Remove all of that and the picture changes. Most older patients now carry a smartphone and can tap a link in a text message; what they reasonably refuse is administration. The design rule for this audience is one step, one screen, one tap – and it happens to make feedback easier for every other patient too.

Route 1: the text message with a single link

A text is familiar territory – it arrives in the same place messages from family arrive. Keep the message short and the promise honest:

“Thank you for visiting [practice name] today. If you’d like to tell us how it went, just tap here – it takes 20 seconds: [link].”

The page it opens must hold up its end: large tap targets, big type, no forms before the rating, and it must work identically on an eight-year-old Android as on a new iPhone. If your current feedback page fails that test, fix the page before blaming the patients.

Route 2: the QR poster – with large print and simple words

QR codes stopped being exotic when pubs and GP surgeries adopted them, and many older patients use them happily – provided the poster respects them. A5 or A4, by the exit, at seated eye level, with large type: “How was your visit today? Point your phone camera at this square and tap the link that appears. It takes 20 seconds.” Spelling out the camera step matters – “scan the QR code” assumes vocabulary; “point your camera at the square” assumes nothing.

Route 3: the family member’s phone

Many elderly patients arrive with a spouse, son or daughter who does the digital driving. Make the invitation cover them: “You’re welcome to ask a family member to help you share your feedback.” One honest boundary: help means help. A relative can hold the phone and read the screen, but the words and the rating must be the patient’s own – and staff should never type a review on a patient’s behalf.

Route 4: paper, without apology

Some patients will never touch a screen, and their feedback counts just as much. A short paper slip at reception – “How was your visit? [five faces or boxes] Anything we should know?” – with a box to post it in keeps their voice in your monthly picture. Paper feedback cannot become a Google review (only the patient can post those, from their own account), but it serves the deeper purpose: hearing about problems while they are still fixable, and routing concerns to the practice manager privately.

Why it’s worth including everyone

Practices with older patient lists often assume reviews are a young person’s game, and quietly opt out. The readers haven’t: 76% of consumers regularly read reviews for local businesses (BrightLocal 2023), and among people choosing a doctor, 71% check reviews as their first step (Software Advice). Meanwhile NHS.uk closed its public star-ratings in 2025, so Google is where your practice’s public reputation now lives. One final rule that applies to every route above: invite every patient, never reward a review and never steer only the happy ones towards Google – Google’s rules forbid both, whatever the patient’s age.