Reblog: The Problem With Patient Experience
Posted: May 25, 2015 Filed under: Customer Experience, Empathy, Healthcare, Patient experience, Systems Thinking | Tags: communication, compassion, empathy, HCAHPS, healthcare, improve the patient experience, key drivers, patient experience Leave a commentThis is one of (if not) the best article I’ve read on the key drivers of patient experience! Clear and simple!
This blog post originally appeared on the PRC Custom Research blog on April 30, 2015. Co-authored by William Maples, M.D., oncologist, passionate and compassionate champion for experience improvement, founding member and continuing contributor to the Experience Innovation Network, we thought it was too good not to share. Reblogged with permission.
By William Maples, MD, Executive Director for The Institute for Healthcare Excellence and Candace A. Quinn, COO, Professional Research Consultants, Inc.
As a result of an article that we saw recently in The Atlantic that attempted to describe the quest for creating an excellent patient experience as one that has nurses and caregivers pursuing some holy grail of happiness, good food, and smiles, we reflected on the importance and impact of patient experience on the overall care and eventual health of each and every patient, and, we have reaffirmed our conviction that our industry must first develop an understanding of…
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At your service: Bringing hospitality to hospitals leads to happier patients
Posted: November 15, 2014 Filed under: Healthcare, Patient experience | Tags: chief experience officer, hospitality, patient experience, patient experience officer, patient satisfaction Leave a comment
While you won’t get a mint on your pillow at your next hospital stay, you may notice a better overall experience. Hospitals are taking a cue from the hospitality industry to boost patient satisfaction with a newly created job: chief experience officer.
Think of a chief experience officer (CXO) as a high-level hospital concierge who ensures that a patient’s hospital stay is as comfortable and pleasant as possible. A CXO champions compassionate care, focusing on open communication with patients and “making sure staff are attentive to their needs, whether that’s more face time with nurses or quieter hallways so they can sleep,” reports The Washington Post.
Happy patients, prosperous hospitals
The shift to improve customer service isn’t entirely due to the kindness of medical executives; it benefits hospitals as well. Patient satisfaction scores — tallied by the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey — have…
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Lesson From Dana-Farber: Treat The Whole Person
Posted: October 9, 2014 Filed under: Customer Experience, Empathy, Healthcare, Patient experience | Tags: Bruce Temkin, customer experience, Dana Farber, patient experience, patient-centered, person-centered Leave a comment
As part of yesterday’s Customer Experience Day celebration, I attended a CXPA local networking event at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) in Boston. The session kicked off with a panel from the DFCI discussing patient experience.
I’m a big fan of DFCI and have enormous respect for the great work that it does in battling cancer. The panel, which included a cancer survivor turned volunteer, was fantastic. I was inspired by the commitment and compassion they displayed.
One of the points that came up was DFCI’s commitment to treat the whole person. This explains why it provides things such as hand massages during chemotherapy treatment. DFCI doesn’t just treat the disease, it treats the whole person.
I love the concept of the whole person. It’s not just applicable to DFCI or other health care providers, but to every organization. It’s a powerful concept for anyone who cares about customer experience. Here’s how I…
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“She gained as much as she gave.” TMC Volunteer contributes to major improvements for diabetics’ care
Posted: October 6, 2014 Filed under: Healthcare, Patient experience | Tags: diabetes, kaizen, patient advocate, patient experience, patient satisfaction, performance improvement, process improvement, tuscon medical center, volunteer, volunteerism Leave a comment
Marjorie Zismann
TMC Volunteer
“You have diabetes. Buy a book.”
That’s what Marjorie Zismann’s doctor told her when he diagnosed her with type 2 diabetes in her early 60’s. Since then, attempts to understand her disease have left her completely frustrated. Every day, she weighs herself, pricks her finger, squeezes out a drop of blood to check her blood sugar and takes her medication. Mealtimes consist of sorting out “yes” foods from “no” foods, which leaves her feeling restricted with little control over her disease.
Now 78 years old and retired, Zismann volunteers at Tucson Medical Center. She was a patient here about a year ago, and was invited to be a patient advocate during what’s called a “kaizen.” It’s a rapid-improvement workshop made up of about a dozen leaders from different departments who set out to tackle a very specific issue. The meeting is a crucial process of TMC’s…
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The Value of Customer Experience, Quantified
Posted: August 3, 2014 Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service | Tags: Harvard Business, patient experience, Peter Kriss Leave a commentPlan of Care Whiteboards Post 2: Improving Satisfaction and Length of Stay at Riley Hospital for Children
Posted: February 20, 2014 Filed under: Healthcare, Patient experience | Tags: ExperiaHealth, healing, healthcare, optimizing healing healthcare, patient experience, patient-centered care, plan of care, whiteboard, whiteboards Leave a commentNurses in the PICU at Riley Hospital for Children are dedicated to their work. They take care of some of the sickest kids, and try to provide comfort and support to parents and families as well. But despite their best efforts, survey scores for parents’ trust in ICU nurses, feeling nurses explained clearly, and believing they had enough input into their child’s care were only in the mid-seventies (for percent always).
Knowing how important communication and trust are to parents of PICU patients, three experienced PICU nurses applied for and received a grant from the AACN and devised a solution to improve plan of care communication. They combed evidence-based best practices, conducted an appreciative inquiry with a high-performing unit within their hospital, spoke with fellow care team members, and tapped into the expertise of their Parents as Faculty program to get a clear patient/family perspective. The solution they created built…
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Reprise: Is Anyone Listening? A quick service tale
Posted: August 4, 2013 Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, Healthcare, Leadership, Management, Patient experience | Tags: customer experience, customer service, doctor, health, healthcare, hospital, hospitals, listen, listening, patient experience, physician, service, service excellence Leave a comment
Walking out to the supermarket with a bag in each hand, I felt “pain” as I took a step. It was like a snap in my foot and PAIN, like a pinch – ouch! I got to the car and drove home. My foot was swollen and it hurt–especially if I put any weight on it. As soon as I put the groceries away, I called and got an appointment with the Physician’s Assistant at my doctor’s office.
(A little bit about my doctor – looking at the photo collages on her office walls, you could have cut her face out and put mine in. We had lived such similar lives – I could have matched her photo for photo. We were close in age, both first born, and I felt very connected with her. She was a good listener – I thought…)
Back to the pain in my foot…
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Prioritizing Patient Experience Operational Standards Just as Important as its Definition
Posted: August 4, 2013 Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, Healthcare, Leadership, Patient experience | Tags: benchmarking, benchmarking study, caregiver, Cleveland Clinic, defining patient experience, Disney, Doug Della Pietra, Forbes, guests, HCAHPS, health, healthcare, hospital, Hospital Impact, hospitals, Jason A. Wolf, Jason Wolf, operational framework, patient experience, patient satisfaction, priorities, service, service excellence, standards, The Beryl Institute, The State of Patient Experience in American Hospital 2013: Positive Trends and Opportunities for the Future Leave a commentThe Beryl Institute’s latest benchmarking study “The State of Patient Experience in American Hospital 2013: Positive Trends and Opportunities for the Future” shows that more and more healthcare organizations have a formal definition of “patient experience.” In 2013, 45% of respondents indicated that their organization had a formal definition compared to 27% just 2 years ago. Interestingly, in 2011, 15% of respondents implied that they didn’t know whether their organization had a formal definition or not; in the latest study, not one respondent checked “Don’t Know,” which to me signals a clear awareness on the part of those that participated in the survey of what defining patient experience means and entails.
Jason Wolf, President of The Beryl Institute, emphasized the significance of defining the patient experience in this way:
Simply stated, without definition an organization has little to no basis for action.
Too frequently, in the minds of hospital executives and leaders, “patient experience” equates to “service,” “patient satisfaction,” or “service excellence.” Yet, there are other critical elements of the patient experience such as safety, quality, etc.
In my latest Hospital Impact blog, I suggest that having “a prioritized operational framework for the patient experience that would effectively guide the beliefs, behavior and ultimate decision” of caregivers and healthcare leaders is essential. In fact, I took the following stand:
I disagree with the conclusion that the Forbes’ article title (“Why Rating Your Doctor Is Bad For Your Health“) suggests, namely, that “rating your doctor is bad for your health.” Rating physicians, hospitals, medical practices, surgical centers, etc. is not the fundamental issue; competing and incorrectly prioritized operational standards are bad for the health of our patients.
Prioritizing patient experience operational standards is just as important as its definition of patient experience. Both Disney and the Cleveland Clinic have defined “experience” as well as created a prioritized an operational framework to guide their “guests” and “caregivers,” respectively. To see their frameworks: read Prioritize operational standards for patient experience success
Introducing Mindfulness in Healthcare Organizations
Posted: August 3, 2013 Filed under: Empathy, Healthcare, Leadership, Mindfulness | Tags: Daniel Goleman, EI, emotion, emotional intelligence, Emotions, EQ, healthcare, hospital, hospitals, Louise Altman, meditation, mindfulness, patient experience Leave a commentInspired by Daniel Goleman’s July 28, 2013 article “Introducing Mindfulness in Organizations,” I posted the following discussion question on several LinkedIn Groups: “…I am making an assumption that introducing mindfulness in hospitals and healthcare organizations is important and of interest. I do believe it is critically important for person-centered (staff, physician, leader and patient/family) care. Do you agree? If so, what are some effective ways of introducing mindfulness in healthcare?”
Immediately after posting the discussion question, I found a partial answer in Louise Altman’s July 25, 2013 blog “Mindfulness is a Whole Body Experience.” Altman writes:
Dr. Daniel Beal co-author of a Rice University study on emotional suppression in the workplace comments, ‘Our study shows that emotional suppression takes a toll on people. It takes energy to suppress emotions, so it’s not surprising that workers who must remain neutral are often more rundown or show greater levels of burnout. The more energy you spend controlling your emotions, the less energy you have to devote to tasks at hand.’
While there are many professions that require its workers to “remain neutral,” healthcare — with its added life-saving stresses and inherent risks — is a prime environment in which its workers are expected to remain emotionally neutral in the face of never-ending and complex demands.
Perhaps, one of the most basic and fundamental ways of introducing mindfulness in healthcare organizations is to highlight the benefits that mindfulness training and practice could have on its caregivers who experience constant stress and demands on and the emotional suppression and neutrality often required of them. Mindfulness and emotional intelligence are inextricably linked; therefore, it seems to me that introducing mindfulness in healthcare organizations would not only improve the caregiver experience but directly correlate to the patient and family experience as well.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on the subject:
While “I am making an assumption that introducing mindfulness in hospitals and healthcare organizations is important and of interest. I do believe it is critically important for person-centered (staff, physician, leader and patient/family) care. Do you agree? If so, what are some effective ways of introducing mindfulness in healthcare?”
Thanks for reading! I look forward to your comments and thoughts.
The Power of Empathy and Emotional Intelligence for the Patient Experience
Posted: May 2, 2013 Filed under: Empathy, Healthcare, Patient experience | Tags: Carolyn Thomas, compassion, empathic, empathy, healing, healthcare, healthcare reform, Heart Sisters, hospital, hospitals, optimizing healing healthcare, patient, patient experience, patient-physician relationship, physician, provider, reform, service 2 CommentsIncreasing research and evidence point not only to the benefits of empathy for patients but to the providers who feel empathy and make a meaningful emotional connection with their patients. Colette Herrick writes an incredible article on the power of empathy and the importance of “Emotional Intelligence in Health Care Relationships.” I am grateful to have come across this piece through Carolyn Thomas’ blog “Heart Sisters.”
I’m so pleased to share, with her kind permission, this guest post written by Colette Herrick, originally published on the Six Seconds website. I especially love her example of how a new puppy taught her twin grandchildren a powerful lesson in compassion.
♥
“While medicine continues to advance, receiving health care as a patient is fundamentally a human process.
At the center of effective care delivery is a connection between the health care provider and patient. Yet in the last 25 years, many pressures have eroded the quality of this human-to-human healing connection. The good news is that in spite of all the external and very real pressures on the patient-provider relationship, research reveals something many of us have known: health care providers can learn fairly simple skills that make a large difference.
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Optimizing Healing Healthcare 