87 industry leaders reveal their secrets to elevating patient care

Becker's asked C-suite executives from hospitals and health systems across the U.S. to share their ideas to boost the patient experience. 

The 87 executives featured in this article are all speaking at the Becker's Healthcare 12th Annual CEO+CFO Roundtable on Nov. 11-14, 2024, at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago.

To learn more about this event, click here.

If you would like to join as a speaker or a reviewer, contact Mariah Muhammad at mmuhammad@beckershealthcare.com or agendateam@beckershealthcare.com. 

For more information on sponsorship opportunities, contact Jessica Cole at jcole@beckershealthcare.com.

As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who will speak at our conference. The following are answers from our speakers at the event.

Question: What are you doing to boost the patient experience?

Rod Hochman, MD. President and CEO of Providence (Renton, Wash.): At Providence, we are redefining healthcare by shifting our focus from reactive to proactive care. Our aim is to build enduring partnerships with patients, empowering them to actively manage their health. Digital innovation is the cornerstone of this transformation. By personalizing experiences, optimizing workflows and leveraging technology, we're easing the burden on our clinicians and delivering exceptional care.

To ensure patients receive the right care at the right time, we are leveraging digital technology. Our recent spinout, Praia Health, is a testament to our commitment to personalized health care experiences.

Additionally, our Consumer Conversational and Navigation Platform is designed to guide patients through our complex healthcare system, enabling self-service and reducing clinician workload. This platform empowers patients to make informed decisions while simultaneously deflecting messages to the clinician in-basket to optimize provider efficiency.

Patient feedback is central to our continuous improvement efforts. Through channels such as our Patient Advisory Council, we gather invaluable insights to inform tailored improvement plans for the communities we serve.

Every member of the Providence team, from clinicians to support staff, plays a vital role in fulfilling our vision of delivering health for a better world. Our steadfast dedication to value-based care, community engagement and patient-centeredness is driving our transformation to a more accessible, compassionate and engaging health care system for every individual we serve.

Richard J. Gray, MD. CEO of Mayo Clinic Arizona (Phoenix); Vice President of Mayo Clinic: Our primary value at Mayo Clinic is the needs of the patient come first. Through this lens, we continually evaluate and implement new ways to enhance the patient experience. We are intentionally using technology to connect people with data to produce new insights and create more seamless, personalized care pathways for patients. This includes ambient intelligence and personalized displays within our physical facilities. 

We are also investing in our physical structures alongside our digital investments to create intuitive experiences within "neighborhoods" where labs, imaging, and treatments are built around the anticipated needs of our patients. This patient-centered approach extends beyond our campuses through programs like Mayo Clinic Care Hotel, Advanced Care at Home and Cancer Care Beyond Walls, through which we provide hospital-quality care to patients in the comfort of a home environment using advanced technology to monitor and communicate with them.

Maneesh Goyal. COO of Mayo Clinic Platform at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.): Mayo Clinic Platform is founded on Mayo Clinic’s patient first philosophy and our mission is to enable new knowledge, new solutions, and new technologies that improve patients' lives. 

Our goal is to solve some of today’s pressing problems in healthcare so that we can prevent, predict and cure diseases, so that care is affordable, accessible and personalized for patients. We are enabling innovation so patients no matter where in the world they live get high-quality, equitable care they need. We partner with mission-driven innovators to develop and deploy digital solutions that can detect disease early, help patients connect to clinical trials that are a perfect fit for them, provide clinical decision support to physicians, manage routine and repetitive tasks like documentation, etc. so providers are not burnt out and can focus on patients. 

Better patient experience means better patient outcomes. That’s what we are relentlessly working toward.

Albert L. Wright Jr. President and CEO of West Virginia University Health System (Morgantown): To boost the patient experience, we are taking several targeted actions to ensure each patient feels truly valued. We’ve implemented a comprehensive culture training program centered around the 4Cs — compassion, communication, competence, and commitment — so that every staff member can provide exceptional care. We also conduct regular patient rounding to gather feedback directly from those we serve, allowing us to make real-time improvements based on their experiences. 

Additionally, we’ve introduced a system for recognizing and rewarding employees who are frequently mentioned in patient satisfaction surveys, reinforcing our commitment to excellence. By continually listening to patient voices and celebrating our dedicated staff, we’re working hard to create a warm, caring environment that prioritizes the well-being and satisfaction of every individual who walks through our doors.

Amy Mansue. President and CEO of Inspira Health Network (Mullica Hill, N.J.): Creating a great patient experience starts with the fundamentals of clear and consistent communications and seamless teamwork. At Inspira Health, we know that there is a lot of power in these basic elements that help to create genuine connections and build trust with our patients, especially when they see us all working together. 

Specifically, through tailored service recovery and excellence training, we’ve equipped our staff with the tools they need to enhance their daily interactions with patients. Our real-time rounding allows patients and families to ask questions and receive immediate explanations about their care and how we’re working together to help them recover. 

We’ve also implemented proactive communication about wait times and delays, demonstrating how we value our patients by giving them the respect they deserve.

By focusing on team dynamics, seamless collaboration and transparent communication throughout the entire patient journey, our patient satisfaction scores related to teamwork and communication have consistently trended upwards over the past two years, and we’ve seen an increase in positive patient feedback.

Cynthia Dold. COO of UW Medicine (Seattle); Associate Vice President for Medical Affairs of University of Washington: 

• Expanding use of digital tools. In addition to expanding adoption of tools such as online appointing, self-check in and MyChart portal use, we are rolling out several new EHR-based tools designed to increase patient engagement by personalizing communications (including providing more non-English language services) and streamline tasks for both patients and care teams. We are also exploring whether/how AI-assisted responses to patient messages may impact timeliness of responses, patient perception of the quality of the reply and/or care team efficiency.
•  "Back to basic" tactics. Reintroducing evidence-based practices such as behavior standards, patient rounding and team huddles. Many of these behaviors fell to the wayside during the pandemic and we are working on refreshing expectations to align with the new realities of care delivery which include the integration of telemedicine, significantly higher volumes and the increasing importance of balancing workforce well-being with patient experience initiatives.

Craig Kent, MD. CEO of UVA Health; Executive Vice President of Health Affairs at the University of Virginia (Charlottesville): At UVA Health, we have executed an impactful transformation of our emergency departments across our system, with particular emphasis on our flagship academic medical center, using a quality improvement model that reworks patient flow. This has had a profound impact on reducing crowding in our waiting room, shortening overall wait times, and enhancing patient safety and satisfaction — all while accommodating steady increases in patient volume.

Although a new 80-bed emergency room was opened in 2019, the UVA Health University Medical Center’s emergency department was not fully optimized throughout the pandemic — nor was it equipped for the significant patient surges that followed. What was required was a complete restructuring of patient flow. We have adopted an acuity and specialty-based model, with a triage physician at intake to expedite care and accelerate testing. Patients are triaged by acuity. We introduced real-time patient flow leaders to preempt and resolve slowdowns. We have also implemented vertical care by replacing hospital beds with chairs for our low and middle acuity patients who visit emergency departments at all of our hospitals. Additionally, an admission holding unit is used to free up acute care areas, allowing us to accommodate newer acute patients.

This has been transformational for our teams but more so for our patients. All of our emergency metrics have improved following this initiative. (And to the principle that “no good deed goes unpunished,” our emergency department volumes were 18% above budget this past year.)

Wendy Horton. CEO of UVA Health University Medical Center (Charlottesville, Va.): At UVA Health, we enhance the patient experience through innovative and proven strategies. We set annual targets, display them on our dashboard, and use this data to guide real-time patient rounding and continuous improvement. Our leaders review patient safety and survey data weekly, sharing insights to drive care enhancements. We are also redesigning care delivery by increasing clinic access, implementing a physician-in-triage model in our emergency department, and engaging patient and family advisors.

Susan Moffatt-Bruce, MD, PhD. President, Lahey Hospital and Medical Center, Beth Israel Lahey Health (Burlington, Mass.); Professor of Surgery, UMass Chan Medical School: Lahey Hospital & Medical Center, part of Beth Israel Lahey Health, made a significant advancement in transforming the patient experience this year by introducing a cohesive electronic health record platform to care for, serve and communicate with our patients. 

The single EHR platform is being fully integrated across our entire healthcare system of hospitals and care organizations and includes a new patient portal, allowing patients full access to their medical records, timely appointment scheduling and open communication with our clinicians. This initiative further enhances the team-based, coordinated approach Lahey Hospital & Medical Center employs in delivering seamless care to our patients and serving the healthcare needs of our community. 

In addition, Lahey Hospital & Medical Center has streamlined our Emergency Department processes, implementing early treatment protocols and fast track triage to decrease wait times for patients. We have expanded our visiting hours to better accommodate family members and host a robust, onsite pet therapy program that is a source of comfort for patients, visitors and colleagues alike, helping to reduce anxiety, promote relaxation and lift moods.

Peter Banko. President and CEO of Baystate Health (Springfield, Mass.): The right thing in the wrong context is always the wrong thing. Patient experience gets maximum boost when it fits in the organizational and community DNA. So, we are doing a tremendous amount of work right now in brand discovery to enable our patient experience launch (and other strategic initiatives). We are asking our caregivers (not governance or leadership) why they work here to define who we are and why we matter. And to more fully understand the ideas that people form about us based on everything they see, touch, and experience.

Elizabeth Wako, MD. President and CEO of Swedish Health Services (Seattle): Providence Swedish recently expanded its Patient Experience Council, a multi-disciplinary group with representatives from all service areas, focused on improving patient experience. This work included: (1) Scaling and spreading campus-specific scorecards to all locations, cross-walking exact questions from the experience surveys our patients receive to external ratings; (2) Helping teams understand the impact of their patient experience scores on external ratings and value-based programs; (3) Empowering local teams to understand and focus on key areas of experience; (4) Sharing results of both questions in the hospital environment domain (cleanliness and quietness) to enable local teams to better track process improvement initiatives for these areas. With this renewed focus and oversight, we continue to see improvement in our patients' perception of the responsiveness of our hospital staff.

Damond W. Boatwright. President and CEO of Hospital Sisters Health System (Springfield, Ill.): Everything Hospital Sisters does begins and ends with our patients’ experience top of mind. Yet, as any healthcare leader will admit, we can do better. We are investing in some of the latest patient satisfaction and digital experience platforms and tools to help us improve patient experience across the entire continuum of care — from searching for and selecting our services, to receiving care, through discharge, billing and beyond. We want to create an exceptional experience for everyone who entrusts us with their health, and that means every encounter with HSHS must be positive. 

We have seen significant operational improvements in key departments, such as ensuring our ED patients are seen quickly and, if necessary, admitted on a timely basis. Even our tiered safety huddles are opportunities to identify patient satisfaction issues and we are doing our best to address those in real time. I’m incredibly proud of the progress our nurses, physicians and colleagues have made and their commitment to provide an outstanding experience for each and every patient we serve.

Mark G. Moseley, MD. President of USF Tampa General Physicians; Executive Vice President of Tampa (Fla.) General Hospital: In our system of care, we believe that if you take care of your people, they will care for our patients and families. We also believe our people need the skills and tools to accomplish this aim. For so long in healthcare, we have assumed that the people we hire have the innate skills to manage complex interpersonal interactions with patients who come to us scared, frustrated and sick. This is a fallacy, and frankly an unacceptable risk that we must all mitigate in our organizations. We have rolled out a system framework for how our people interact with patients, and this system is based on our values and the principles of high reliability and just culture. This has created an expected level of competency by our teams that we can build on with individual coaching (for those who need extra help) and rewards and recognition (for those who are excelling). 

The keys to the success of this program, in my opinion, lie in its direct linkage to our system's shared purpose, vision and values, and our “operating system” of high reliability and just culture that permeates all we do as we continue our journey to zero patient harm. 

Madeline Bell. President and CEO of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: I pay very close attention to the feedback I receive from CHOP staff and from patients and families because it helps me identify improvements that will make the biggest impact. For example, after several years of hearing from staff about their feelings of burnout and stress, and their inability to disconnect from work, we expanded our employee well-being program and put additional support in place for our staff. Without those changes, it is likely that we would have seen increased turnover, and our patient experience would have suffered as a result. When our employees feel engaged and supported, our patients benefit, too. 

Neil Meltzer. President and CEO of LifeBridge Health (Baltimore): As we tell our team members, every person in our health system plays a role in creating a great experience for every patient, every time. To boost the patient experience, we are investing in our digital front door, making it easier and more convenient for our patients to connect with our health system. Patient experience begins well before a patient comes to one of our facilities, as well as after they leave our care.

From appointment scheduling to EVS and revenue cycle, we have initiatives underway across our health system focused on improving the inpatient and outpatient care experience, moving to better integrate these initiatives at a systemwide level. Patient experience is a continual topic in our employee communications and Town Hall meetings. We recently implemented online patient experience training, which all team members are required to complete by the end of September. These interactive classes feature video lessons on empathetic communication and other topics with examples and demonstrations, as well as take-away tips. New recognition programs for our team members highlight small acts of peer or patient care, reinforcing that all small moments and gestures matter to people and that we believe every person in our organization, no matter their role, is part of the patient experience.

Matthew E. Cox. CFO of Corewell Health (Grand Rapids and Southfield, Mich.): At Corewell Health, we are committed to delivering a simple, streamlined, and exceptional experience for our patients by leveraging self-service technology and proactively connecting with patients early in their care journey. We collaborate with clinical and operational teams to streamline workflows, reduce errors, and implement patient-friendly billing statements as well as online scheduling, self-registration, and digital payment options and are especially proud of our best-in-class financial counseling program designed to serve our patients early and often in their financial journey. 

Corewell Health also provides ongoing training to our team members on best practices and standards for patient satisfaction and engagement, while measuring and monitoring key performance indicators and patient feedback to identify areas of improvement.  Most importantly, we foster a culture of respect, empathy, and accountability among our team, ensuring we treat patients with dignity and compassion, and placing the patient at the center of all we do.  

Additionally, we have aligned goals and incentives through two performance frameworks we call Simple Experience and Metrics that Matter, ensuring all departments are driving towards common goals and outcomes first and foremost focused on the patient, regardless of setting of care delivery.

Christopher O'Connor. CEO of Yale New Haven Health (Conn.):

• We have gone back to basics to ensure that we have hardwired our evidence-based practices. Such as interval patient bedside rounding. We’ve built an entire standardized model that includes training, education, and accountability to ensure sustainability of this simple but critical practice for patient care. Another key program we have designed is Enhancing Relationship Centered communication which provides tools and skills to all our clinical staff that improves communication, reduces falls, and increases staff productivity.
• Focusing on shifting our culture by prioritizing staff engagement at all levels. For example, connecting our standards of professional behavior to patient experience outcomes. We have highlighted the key behaviors and actions needed by frontline staff, nursing, and doctors.
• Goal setting and data reporting has been a key part of transforming our culture.  We have implemented a gap to goal methodology allowing all levels of staff to fully understand where we are and want to be regarding the patient experience.  This is accompanied by staff friendly data reporting.
• Leveraged technology to improve patient wayfinding,  capturing patient feedback, and aligned safety platforms with satisfaction.

David Krajewski. Executive Vice President and CFO of LifeBridge Health (Baltimore): Patient experience begins before someone ever steps through the door of one of our facilities. When contacting our health system or connecting with our services and healthcare providers, patients now expect the ease of access and convenience they find in the retail industry or in other online and digital interactions.

We look to be a leader and the digital front door for our patients and our communities. People want choice and convenience, so we’ve been working strategically to find ways to improve other elements of the experience. As an example, we’ve invested substantial effort in our payment experience: providing a variety of clear options, and, in some cases, support to make sure the patient feels supported and cared for – even after they’ve been discharged. Patients won’t come to us if information or resources are difficult to find or it’s challenging to access them. We want to eliminate any friction in their digital experience.

Other initiatives range from a touchless check-in process to improving our physician directory and online scheduling through our web platform and app, where we see that nearly a third of all appointments are booked after regular business hours. That’s a real convenience that didn’t exist for the healthcare consumer even a few years ago.

Jason A. Jarzembowski, MD, PhD. CEO of Children’s Specialty Group, Children's Wisconsin (Milwaukee): We start every visit – in the clinic, in the hospital, or anywhere else – by asking our patient and their family "what’s the most important thing to you today?" Once you start doing this broadly you learn that their greatest needs and concerns are often not the top priority for your medical providers or support staff… which means you need to address everyone's priorities to make the encounter a success. And then we end by asking whether they feel like their most important thing has been answered, because if it has, that’s a great patient experience.

Chanda Chacon. President and CEO of Children's Nebraska (Omaha): We are investing in our people. Our people want to deliver exceptional patient and family experiences, so we boost our success if we empower and enable them to do that.

We are listening to our patients and families to define what an exceptional experience looks like. We are then aligning our teams and hyper-focusing our efforts on what matters to the people we serve.

We are engaging our providers through recognition, collaboration, and development. Providers lead the care teams and play a significant role in patient and family experiences, so their involvement in this work is a priority.

Lisa Carter. Southern Regional President of Ballad Health (Johnson City, Tenn.): As patient expectations change in the healthcare space, we are continuing to tweak some of our practices, while staying with tried-and-true basics in others. Leveraging technology solutions is critical as we continue to meet consumer demands and drive innovation. This space is evolving quickly.  In the area of basics, we are focused on common themes such as purposeful leader rounding, bedside shift report, food quality, cleanliness, and engaging families in decision making. And nothing beats courtesy and respect in every interaction.  

Jameela Yusuff, MD, MPH, MS, FACP. Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Episcopal Health Services (Far Rockaway, N.Y.): As the SVP & CMO, I am collaborating with the CXO and our leaders as well as clinicians throughout the system to transform our organizational culture, implement best practices, and instill key behaviors to drive improvements in patient experience and employee engagement. For example, implementing AIDET, senior leadership rounding, bedside shift report, and employee wellness; just to name a few.  Furthermore, we are ensuring every department's standard of work is focused and contributes to our person-centered care journey to drive our patient experience beyond the average expectations. Lastly, we are partnering with our simulation lab to use scripting and role playing to help train our students and housestaff to provide optimal patient centered care. 

Dave Dunkle, MD. President and CEO of Johnson Memorial Health (Franklin, Ind.): At Johnson Memorial Health, we are always looking for ways to improve the patient experience. Recently, we have increased leadership rounding on patients admitted to the hospital, designed a mobile registration process for outpatient ancillary services, and have implemented a new system to allow visitors to order meals online and have them delivered to the room of the patient whom they are visiting. Our leadership team has also been focused on interacting more with front line workers to get their ideas for ways to improve the care and overall experience that patients have at no matter which point they interact with our organization.

Jochen Reiser, MD. President of the University of Texas Medical Branch; CEO of UTMB Health System (Galveston, Texas): Improving the patient experience is crucial for enhancing quality care and ensuring better health outcomes. At UTMB we have a thoughtful strategy to improve patient experience through these key areas:

1. ACCESS: At UTMB, patient access for new appointments is better than the national benchmarks for all specialties, and UTMB is now focused on creating market-based accessibility standards to remain competitive in the local communities where we serve patients. We have an amazing access center that directs patients and provides service to them in all our clinics and hospitals all over the region. Using technology can help us anticipate a patient’s prior experience and then deliver and anticipate options based on previous medical issues and logistics.
2. Artificial intelligence: UTMB is harnessing artificial intelligence to assist actual intelligence to improve the patient experience and accelerate diagnosis and treatment. AI has the ability, very quickly, to parse through mountains of data and find and see things that we otherwise wouldn't see. AI can help our providers organize the work for example, digital imaging,  in a fashion that helps draw the providers attention to the state of interest. And runs sort of like a quality control check to amplify the diagnosis and treatment, and not to replace human decision making.

Genea Wilson, MHA. CEO of East Bay Ambulatory Market at Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.): At Sutter Health, our patient’s experience is a top priority as we aim to provide exceptional experience of care for our patients by being the best place to give and get care. We are focused on a standard communication practice to ensure a “One Sutter” experience of care for our patients, which includes a three step communication process with a Warm Welcome, Narration of Care and a Fond Farewell. Our Sutter Health system office has launched training, toolkits, scripting, rounding, and coaching throughout the system in both the ambulatory and acute care settings to improve our patient’s experience. At Sutter East Bay Medical Foundation, we have taken advantage of these resources by requiring a 100% of our leaders to complete the coach to competency skills workshop and rounding observations with our staff, physicians and our patients. Our Sutter Health CEO, Warner Thomas, said it best: “It’s the difference one person makes for one patient across every single interaction. It’s how one team can bring new hope to our communities. It’s having one plan and one direction that unifies us as one system, one Sutter.”

Olusegun A. Ishmael, MD, MBA. Chief Operating Officer and President of Hospital Division at MetroHealth (Cleveland): Here are a few initiatives aimed at enhancing the patient experience at MetroHealth:

Facility Upgrade: Our new flagship hospital, the Glick Center, was designed to offer a view and natural lighting for every patient room. Every room incorporates technology that identifies a caregiver on a whiteboard when entering the patient room. The room layout encourages family engagement. Our pediatric unit features an indoor-outdoor flex space for a refreshing experience. 

Process Improvements: We're revamping our hourly nursing rounding to be more intentional, ensuring proactive identification of patient needs. Our future vision includes a dedicated rounding team per unit, comprising a PCNA and an LPN, freeing up RNs to operate at the top of their license while maintaining a high level of patient care.

Ongoing Training: We are committed to continuously training our caregivers on effective patient communication, customer service, and service recovery.

Meds to Beds Program: To guarantee our patients receive their medications post-discharge, we've implemented a Meds to Beds program alongside home medication delivery, ensuring delivery within a couple of hours of discharge.

White Linen Dinner Service: We're introducing a white linen dinner service as a special touch for our new moms and partners to make their stay even more memorable.

Meeting the Patients Where They Are: Taking our services directly into the community has been a game-changer because our patients have transportation challenges. By identifying the zip codes where many of our physical therapy patients reside, we strategically placed two community-based therapy clinics. The impact was immediate – our no-show rates plummeted from double digits to single digits within the first 30 days.

J. Scott Just, MD. CEO of UVA Physicians Group (Charlottesville, Va.): At UVA Health, we recognize that a critical component of patient experience is improved access to care. As part of the UVA Health 10-year strategic plan, we launched a key initiative called One Team: United on Access which is designed to increase available appointments for patients across the communities we serve throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. Since its inception in 2022, the One Team initiative has led to a 30% increase in appointment availability, which translates to thousands of new patient visits annually without expanding staff. 

Another vital contributor to patient experience is provider satisfaction. At UVA Health we are dedicated to mitigating the root causes of burnout, including the administrative burden placed on our physicians and advanced practice providers. We have a group of UVA clinicians enrolled in a pilot program using AI ambient listening tools, and are excited about the potential that this technology has to drastically improve efficiency and alleviate documentation tasks, allowing our physicians and APPs to spend more time directly engaged with their patients, which will have a positive impact on patient experience and also help preserve joy in medicine for our clinicians.

Danielle Griggs, PharmD. Chief Pharmacy Officer of UVA Health (Charlottesville, Va.): Patient experience is a key pillar of the UVA Health 10-year strategic plan. Within the UVA Health Pharmacy Ambulatory Network of 10 pharmacies across central Virginia, we are optimizing patient communication, leveraging the newest functionality in Epic communication tools and direct-to-patient 2-way communication integration. We are focused on how patients want to receive communications about their prescriptions, and how we can meet patient’s expectations. 

UVA Health is expanding capacity for ambulatory fulfillment for specialty, retail, and home delivery prescriptions through implementation of the latest automation and conveyance technology, to increase access for patients. Through the implementation of the Pharmacy Central Services Center, we will increase fulfillment capacity 4-fold, centralize call-center operations, and optimize medication inventory management, benefiting patients of all UVA Health pharmacies. This investment in the latest technology, will enable our pharmacies to provide the operational, medication access, and clinical support services needed to optimize patient outcomes.

Charles Emerman, MD. Chair of Emergency Medicine and Medical Director of Service Line at MetroHealth Medical Center (Cleveland): The collaboration between nursing and physician staff is critical for smooth and safe patient care. The patients pick up on that alignment. We are instituting a standardized method of communicating plans between the two groups

Ebrahim Barkoudah, MD. System Chief and Regional Chief Medical Officer of Baystate Health (Springfield, Mass.): Here are a couple of examples of strategies to enhance patient experience. For personalized and patient-centered care, the creation of tailored care plans tailored to individual patient needs and preferences stands as a pivotal strategy in fostering heightened engagement and improved outcomes. Encouraging active patient involvement in decision-making processes (inpatient multidisciplinary bedside rounds) further nurtures a culture of collaboration and empowerment within the treatment journey. 

Transparency and effective communication form vital pillars in elevating the patient experience (Case management follow-up visits and inpatient afternoon rounds). 

Open dialogues that keep patients well-informed about treatment approaches, anticipated wait times, and any potential delays play a crucial role in mitigating anxiety levels and enhancing overall satisfaction. Additionally, transparent financial practices, such as providing clear coverage estimation upfront, contribute to alleviating financial concerns while nurturing trust and understanding. 

The ethos of follow-up and continuous improvement resonates deeply in enhancing patient experiences. Regular post-visit or post-treatment follow-ups showcase commitment to patient well-being, thereby enriching the overall care journey. Integrating patient feedback into operational enhancements signifies a dedication to continual improvement and a patient-centric approach, underlining a commitment to excellence in healthcare provision. Finally, cultivating a supportive organizational culture that prioritizes patient-centric care and employee well-being solidifies the foundation for exceptional patient experiences and clinical successes.

Muhammad Siddiqui. CIO of Reid Health (Richmond, Ind.): At Reid Health, we are deeply committed to enhancing the patient experience in alignment with our mission to lead our communities to well-being, one person at a time. We are implementing several initiatives to achieve this, including the adoption of digital scribes to improve provider-patient interactions and the integration of smart technology in patient rooms to streamline care. Additionally, we have developed our own mobile application, "MyReid," which empowers patients to easily access their health information, manage appointments, and communicate with their care teams. These efforts are designed to not only improve efficiency but also to ensure that every patient feels heard, cared for, and supported throughout their care journey.

By embracing innovative solutions and continually refining our processes, we strive to create an environment where exceptional patient experiences are the standard.

Scott Neeley. President and CEO of Dignity Health Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital (Grass Valley, Calif.): First and foremost, we consistently communicate to every caregiver that kindness and clear communication are an integral part of the patient's care, not an extra bolted on to that care--people heal better when they are cared for with love and when they clearly understand the process they are going through. Second, we have a communication bundle of evidence-based practices that we know improve the effectiveness of our interactions with patients--such as, for example, ensuring that physicians and nurses round as a team on patients each day. Finally, we emphasize caring for and recognizing the caregivers, as we know that patients receive better care and communication when our front line providers feel cared for and have the tools they need to do their jobs.

Rod W. Neill. COO of Bon Secours Mercy Health Medical Group (Cincinnati): The cornerstone to Bon Secours Mercy Health Medical Group’s patient experience strategy is a communication skill building system used by physicians, advanced practice clinicians, and our care teams. The program helps us communicate compassionately with our patients, their families, and the entire team to build relationships, earn trust, and foster engagement.

To build patient trust, inform patient choice, and build our physicians/advanced practice clinicians online presence, BSMH posts star ratings and comments on our providers profile pages. We are working to make this information available to 3rd party healthcare sites like Healthgrades, vital signs, etc.   

BSMH Medical Group is a consistent Press Ganey top quartile performer in patient experience and works diligently with teams that are below median on process improvement initiatives.

Greg Rosencrance. President and CEO of WVU Medicine Thomas Hospitals (South Charleston, W.Va.): Navigators play a crucial role in enhancing patient experience by providing clear and personalized guidance to help patients and visitors navigate complex hospital layouts, reducing stress and confusion.  By offering step-by-step directions, maps, and even escort services, wayfinding navigators ensure that patients can easily find their way to appointments, testing areas, and other essential services, improving punctuality and satisfaction. Training  navigators in customer service skills, cultural competency, and emergency procedures ensures they can provide empathetic, respectful, and effective support to every individual, making their healthcare journey smoother and more reassuring.

Ronald Amodeo. Chief Strategy Officer of UC Davis Health (Sacramento, Calif.): At UC Davis Health, the “patient experience” centers on Kindness, Trust and Inclusion, values that were selected by patients and employees themselves. At 44,000 participants, our Patient Feedback Community informs and co-designs solutions to real projects and initiatives across the health system. We recently launched our first patient family advisory council, serving the transgender and non-binary community. Through meaningful dialogue with patient groups and comprehensive data analysis, our experience design team develops staff workshops, training and rounding efforts focused on the issues that matter most to patients. Finally, our patient relations team acts as a reliable everyday advocate and liaison between patients, families, and their healthcare providers.

Donald R. Avery. President and CEO of Fairview Park Hospital (Dublin, Ga.): Patient experience is a huge focus for our hospital. We focus on it every day, and it includes every employee, not just inpatient nursing staff. We track surveys, especially comments. We have a daily huddle specifically to address patient comments of current patients on a real time basis to address concerns while the inpatient is still in the hospital to perform service recovery. 

We look at every aspect of the outpatient and ER patient visit to the hospital — registration, wait time, communication, comfort, etc. We monitor and time rounding on patients. We have leadership making rounds. Nurse leaders round on inpatients every day of their stay and the goal is for patients to be rounded on every hour. We include physicians in all aspects as well to ensure they are as much a part of ensuring excellent patient experience as are the hospital employees. Communication, feedback, follow up...and ALWAYS closing the loop. We expect every employee to take ownership of their part of patient experience. 

Mayank K. Shah, MD. Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Advocate Condell Medical Center (Libertyville, Ill.), Advocate Health: This question is very close to our heart at Advocate Condell Medical Center. Improving patient experience is even more important than measured quality outcomes. As our healthcare system gets more and more fragmented, I think this is critically important for focus and improvement. Advocate Condell Medical Center is currently evaluating the holistic structure of patient experience so that first and foremost we have an accurate assessment. For example, many institutions rely on the HCAHPs survey as a means of measuring patient experience. We believe that patient experience is more than simple responses on the survey. It should include evaluation of complaints and grievances, social medical comments, and ratings, as well as referral rates made by other patients for services. This information should be combined with focused group data to truly evaluate for gaps in patient experience and coming up with meaningful solutions.  We are focused on building this infrastructure going forward so that we can meaningfully measure and impact patient experience and journey throughout the continuum of care.

Timothy Switaj, MD. Vice President, Chief Medical Officer of West Region and Associate Chief Medical Officer of Primary Care Service Line at WellSpan Health (York, Pa.): The first step to the patient experience is getting the patient in for care. We need to move beyond traditional thoughts on access to, what I have termed, patient-centered access (the 6Rs), getting the right patient, the right care, at the right date/time (convenient for them and clinically appropriate), via the right modality, by the right team member, with the right (desired) outcome. Once we get the patient in the door and meet them where they want to be met for care, then we have to transition from a patient-centered approach to a personalized care experience. Coupling precision medicine with a care experience personalized to each individual unique patient, we can make a marked impact on the patient experience.

Michael C. Backus. President and CEO of Oswego (N.Y.) Health: Our team at Oswego Health from our skilled nursing facility to surgery center, our medical/surgical floors to emergency department work on improving the patient experience daily. Our surgical navigators for example help patients (and families at times) throughout their procedure. Care management helps patients with any variety of needs in our community and often is their only avenue to supportive systems such as heating or cooling assistance. At Oswego Hospital proper we’ve redesigned our medsurg floors to be largely all single occupancy with state-of-the-art technology to ensure quality care delivery. Our 1st floor at the hospital is going through a full renovation this fall and will result in 2025 with a newly remodeled entrance, expanded radiology department, and emergency department. This will all help the patient experience as we are currently seeing increased volumes and need additional resources to manage such, especially as we work toward scaling care around the largest economic development project in New York State history with Micron which is expected to bring 100,000 people to our region in Central New York.

Susmita Pati, MD. Chief of Primary Care Pediatrics and Chief Medical Program Advisor of The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University (N.Y.): At Stony Brook Medicine, we continue to focus on supporting our workforce to provide the highest quality patient care possible. Creating a positive workforce culture is our first priority in our strategic plan. We are proud to leverage our collaborative interdisciplinary capacity to be the preferred healthcare employer and provider organization in our region.

Robert Baxter. President of Mercy Health Toledo (Ohio): We are focused on enhancing the patient experience by emphasizing human connection. Our efforts include training our team members to be more empathetic and attentive while ensuring clear and compassionate communication and creating welcoming, comfortable environments for patients and their families. By prioritizing personalized care and building strong relationships, we are fostering trust and making patients feel valued and understood. These initiatives aim to create a more supportive and positive experience for patients throughout their healthcare journey.

Siri Nelson. President and CEO of Marshall Medical Center (Placerville, Calif.): At Marshall, we strive for a unified, systemwide approach to elevate both the patient and staff experience, guided by our "Every Person, Every Time" Ecosystem Behaviors framework. By holding each other accountable to achieving top-decile quality of care, we foster employee engagement and enhance the patient experience through a culture of mutual care and respect. Transparency and awareness of quality improvement initiatives are also essential. 

These initiatives include, but are not limited to:

• Improving patient throughput
• Decreasing length of stay (LOS)
• Reducing wait and turnaround times
• Launching the "First Impressions" marketing campaign
• Conducting patient and family rounding to proactively address concerns in real-time
• Enhancing communication with patients through the use of AIDET (Acknowledge, Introduce, Duration, Explanation, Thank You)
• Making post-discharge phone calls

Garrett A. South. Senior Leader of Patient Experience of Dignity Health, California Hospital Medical Center (Los Angeles): As the executive with oversight of patient experience at my hospital, this question is at the forefront of my mind every single day. This year, I am focusing on what I believe to be the future of the human experience in healthcare: fostering human connections. Healthcare is fundamentally about human beings caring for other human beings, and the key to enhancing patient experience lies in deepening these connections and fostering a sense of belonging.

Emerging from the pandemic, we are acutely aware of the epidemic of social isolation that has afflicted our society and its detrimental effects. Since everyone interacts with the healthcare system at some point in their lives, we see it as our responsibility to combat this isolation by creating meaningful connections and a sense of belonging. As a safety net hospital, there is an even greater sense of urgency to nurture these concepts for the diverse community we serve. Many of our patients and their families have been marginalized or disenfranchised due to systemic racism and historical biases, leading them to believe they don’t belong and can’t connect. The goal is to counteract this narrative and foster a community where everyone feels they belong, incorporating health equity into all our experience efforts.

We are also broadening our perspective from patient experience to consumer experience. This involves adding a consumer lens, a health equity lens, and a patient advocate lens to all our decision-making processes. By incorporating the diverse voices and perspectives of our community, we ensure that every aspect of our operations — from the signage we put up to the workflows we implement — reflects the needs and values of those we serve.

Nayan D. Patel, CIO, Upson Regional Medical Center (Thomaston, Ga.): The most impactful project that we are delivering for improving patient care is the implementation of ambient listening to personalize the patient/provider interaction. Not only is this better for the patient experience, but improves overall performance and health/well-being of our providers, which in turn, improves their communication abilities back to the patient.  The ambient clinical intelligence solution automatically documents patient encounters and is integrated with our EHR with more consistency and removes the extra cognitive thinking for the providers.

Ashley Arey, Vice President of Care Access at UNC Health (Chapel Hill, N.C.): We have several efforts underway, all intended to make it easier for patients to get the care they need and to literally put their healthcare into their own hands. In the last year, we’ve seen a 37% increase in self-scheduling; we continue to improve this functionality, extending it to more clinics and specialties. We have also expanded the use of text messaging, offering patients a more quick and convenient option than the traditional phone call. Referrals can even be scheduled via text message. Overall, our goal is to simplify the process for our patients. We’ve made a lot of great progress and have even more efforts planned for the year ahead.

Andy Anderson, MD. Chief Medical and Quality Officer of RWJBarnabas Health (West Orange, N.J.): We are intensely focused on patient experience as a health system priority initiative. We have multiple ongoing complementary approaches including: 

1) engaging our front line physicians and nurses with emphasis on the why behind the work and the importance of connecting with patients and their caregivers; 

2) training our physicians to be better communicators (such as sitting down, making eye contact, and using empathetic phrases); 

3) empowering our nurse leaders through daily rounding to solve patient issues real time; and 

4) emphasizing patient experience through both hospital and system incentive goals, with achievable targets and stretch targets. 

We are determined to move all of our facilities to the 75th percentile or higher in performance.

Shlomit Schaal, MD, PhD. President and CEO of Houston Methodist Physician Organization; Executive Vice President and Chief Physician Executive of Houston Methodist: The Houston Methodist Physician Organization has implemented a text-message pilot at one of our clinics that updates patients on the wait time for their appointment. The time is calculated based on the physician’s practice that day and is based on key activities within Epic. It has been well-received as evidenced by our patient experience survey results.  

Sunil Madan, MD. Chief Medical Officer of Luminis Health (Annapolis, Md.): Our primary focus is on enhancing the patient's experience by returning to the fundamentals of personalized care. Our approach is built on the foundation of consistent and meaningful interactions with patients, ensuring their voices are heard and their needs are met. The key initiatives are: 

• Rounding: We prioritize regular rounding by both executives and clinical leaders to engage directly with patients and their families. This allows us to understand their concerns firsthand, build trust, and demonstrate our commitment to their well-being.
• Listening to "What Matters to You": During each interaction, we ask patients the critical question, "What matters to you?" This simple yet powerful inquiry helps us identify the most pressing needs and concerns of our patients, allowing us to tailor our care to address their specific priorities.
• Addressing immediate needs: By focusing on the one thing we can address in that moment, we ensure that our patients feel heard and valued. Whether it's alleviating a particular discomfort, providing information, or offering emotional support, we strive to make a tangible difference in their experience.
• Personalized Solutions: Every patient is unique, and so are their needs. Our goal is to provide personalized solutions that resonate with each individual, enhancing their overall satisfaction and outcomes.

Through these efforts, we are committed to creating a healthcare environment where patients feel respected, understood, and cared for. By going back to the basics of compassionate, patient-centered care, we aim to build stronger connections and deliver exceptional healthcare experiences.

Edward S. Kim, MD. Vice Physician-in-Chief of City of Hope (Duarte, Calif.); Physician-in-Chief of City of Hope Orange County: Cancer care is complex and, to obtain the best outcomes, should be a highly personalized experience, tailored to each patient's unique needs and preferences. As an example, we know that about 40 percent of cancer patients use integrative therapies to address disease and chronic conditions such as pain, often without physician supervision. We saw a significant opportunity to address these patient preferences and created a first-of-its-kind national integrative oncology program that brings together Eastern and Western medicines to improve outcomes and quality of life for people with cancer. The Cherng Family Center for Integrative Oncology is advancing research, education and clinical care. Our vision is for it to be the epicenter of translational research, new drug development and holistic care that meets a pressing need for our patients and enhances our connection to the diverse communities we serve.

Vi-Anne Antrum. Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer of Cone Health (Greensboro, N.C.): We are boosting the patient experience by creating an enterprise engagement contact center (E2C2). This will create a frictionless experience for our patients, providers, and community members to access services within Cone Health. We are improving the number of patients that can be seen across all specialties so that access to care is not a barrier. We offer wellness activities like a cooking kitchen where people can take cooking classes and learn how to prepare healthy meals or use Sagewell, our medical fitness facility. By the way, they offer a staffed play zone for kids so busy parents can workout. There is a retail pharmacy which has the most affordable over the counter medication around. These things resonate strongly with our consumers.

Another important body of work underway is the creation of our Value-Based Care Institute (VBCI). The VBCI will help coordinate care across the continuum and be right there with those we serve ensuring they are receiving the necessary support and services to enhance and improve their health outcomes. Additionally, we have strong partnerships with our communities to help patients address their social drivers of health. This helps build loyalty among our patients. One great example of this is our school-based telehealth program. This allows children to receive needed medical care and stay in school so they can have a bright future!

Finally, we hire the best talent and invest in them because we know our patients’ experience is largely driven by our people. When you hire for fit into a strong culture, the things you can accomplish with your patients are limitless!

Brian Peters. CEO of Michigan Health Hospital Association (Okemos): The MHA Keystone Center, our quality and safety improvement arm with a 20-year history, contributes to a better patient experience in all of our member hospitals through a number of initiatives. In particular, we have led a very robust effort on Person- and Family-Centered Care (PFCC), focused on putting the patient and their caregiver at the center of all decision-making, planning and monitoring of care. We developed and promoted a  Roadmap to Person and Family Engagement which provides standardized definitions, policies and practices designed to serve as a resource for healthcare staff and leaders looking to develop or improve PFCC across their organization.

Ian Jasenof, MD. Chief Medical Officer of Mile Square Health Center - UI Health (Chicago): Health outcomes are enhanced by one major concept, that is patient engagement. Without a touchpoint within a healthcare system, outcomes cannot be improved. We have utilized and expanded our use of navigators. Given the complexity of healthcare systems, use of a navigator has been very impactful with follow-up testing, referrals, and scheduling. In essence, they are a patient advocate.

Nate Shinagawa. Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of UCI Health (Orange, Calif.): Transforming the patient experience is as much science as it is art. There must be a clear "why." Then we establish high leverage behaviors that we know make a difference. For example, at UCI Health, we’ve built structure, process, and outcome measures to drive physicians and nurses rounding together. We track the metric daily and know that if we're above 78% consistently then our overall scores will be high. Today, our HCAHPS scores are higher than 90% of hospitals in the CMS database. Our focus now is to make UCI Health the friendliest and most accessible academic healthcare system in the country. We've taken the same approach - establish the why then build the structure, process and outcome metrics that'll make the defining difference. 

Mark Gridley. President and CEO of FHN Memorial Hospital (Freeport, Ill.): Our focus on the patient experience is centered on empathy. We need to continue to take pause and reflect on the individual’s story and needs with the acceptance the one sized tactics will have limited impact. The more we understand our community and the diverse needs the better we can craft the experience to the individual. This includes but is not limited to having our Patient Family Advisory Council pressure test our ideas and processes to make them better for the patient.

Jim Heilsberg. CFO of Tri-State Memorial Hospital and Medical Campus (Clarkston, Wash.): We have been pursuing 5 star rating and received as of this year.

Kelly Macken-Marble. CEO of Osceola (Wis.) Medical Center: At Osceola Medical Center- providing a best-in-class patient experience is a primary strategic objective. 

We are focusing on improving access to care by engaging with our community and patients in the way that they want to engage with us, meaning providing the communication and visiting venues that they prefer. Visit options offered from traditional in person primary care and urgent care to asynchronous acute care visits and a virtual primary care service.

We are also using our daily engagement system boards (or department huddle boards) to drive improvement in patient experience. Each department in the organization focuses on an improvement target based on opportunities we are hearing from our patients. The team that provides direct patient care is empowered to make the changes needed to improve their patients and families experience. 

Including the voice of the patient in our work is also critical. We have an active patient advisory council that we engage for regular feedback and insights. 

We are exceeding our patient experience targets this year and will continue our work to improve!

Debbie Lull, BSN. Chief Nursing Officer of Mackinac Straits Health System (St. Ignace, Mich.): Mackinac Straits Health System is a critical access hospital, licensed for 15 beds in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Due to the lower inpatient volumes we receive from HCAHPS surveys we are addressing patient experiences through individual service lines. For example, we are a member of the Michigan Arthroplasty Registry Collaborative Quality Initiative (MARCQI) which is a group of orthopedic surgeons and medical professionals dedicated to improving the quality of care for patients undergoing hip and knee replacement procedures in Michigan. 

We collect data from patients having hip or knee replacements using questionnaires called Patient Reported Outcome Measures. This assesses their care from the clinic experience to discharge, including the surgery, acute care, and therapy departments. This information is then used to address the effectiveness of our orthopedic program which organically transfers to workflows impacting other service lines. Therefore, our approach to patient experience is assessing the continuum of care and not an episodic experience in the acute care setting.

Ghanshyam Shah, MD. Chief Medical Officer of Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital (Barrington, Ill.): We have introduced patient simulations along with providing individual score cards to our hospitalist groups.

Raji Kumar. CEO and Managing Partner of Crescent Regional Hospital (Lancaster, Texas) and Hill Regional Hospital (Hillsboro, Texas): Crescent Regional Hospital, an 84-bed facility in Lancaster, Texas, has embarked on a groundbreaking transformation in telehealth through its partnership with the Dutch hologram company Holoconnects. This collaboration has positioned Crescent Regional Hospital as a pioneer in the U.S. healthcare landscape by being the first hospital to implement hologram technology for enhancing patient care.

Crescent Regional Hospital utilizes an 86-inch tall Holobox to connect patients with specialists, offering a lifelike telehealth experience that significantly improves access to care. This advanced technology facilitates personal interactions between patients and off-site specialists through a full-motion holographic projection. This initiative is particularly beneficial for "non-touch" visits such as pre-operative and post-operative consultations.

Specialists at Crescent Regional Hospital typically visit the Lancaster clinic one or two days a week, focusing on surgery days, while the remainder of their time is spent at various clinics across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The installation of the Holobox allows these specialists to conduct real-time, lifelike consultations without the need for physical presence, thereby reducing patient admission times. This enables patients to receive timely discharge instructions and reduces anxiety by providing a more immersive and reassuring interaction compared to traditional video calls

Crescent Regional Hospital and Holoconnects co-developed the "Doctor-Patient Hologram Engagement System," which includes a 3D hologram display at the hospital and a turnkey hologram video studio at the remote clinic. The system is designed for ease of use by hospital staff, requiring minimal training due to a user-friendly interface. The launch of this innovative technology garnered widespread media coverage, featuring in prestigious outlets such as Forbes, The New York Times, ABC News, CNN, and Becker’s Hospital Review.

Through the implementation of hologram technology, Crescent Regional Hospital has demonstrated a significant advancement in telehealth, enhancing patient care and experience, improving operational efficiency, and setting a new standard in the delivery of healthcare.

Ryan Nicholas, MD. Chief Quality Officer of Mercy Medical Group (Sacramento, Calif.): Limited access to primary care services is a major source of patient dissatisfaction. Mercy Medical Group is addressing this with Express Primary Care clinics where same day or next day low acuity needs are being addressed separate from the urgent care and traditional primary care clinics. We are also hiring more providers with non-standard practice models. We recently hired a physician to a combined hospitalist/urgent care/primary care position. We have implemented online self-scheduling in select clinics. We continue to provide payer agnostic care for patients with fee-for-service Medicare and Medicaid plans as well as the uninsured. We have recently completed a systemwide ambulatory schedule optimization process to boost access and standardize scheduling for consistency across primary and specialty care. 

Adam Roggia. CEO of Sports Medicine Associates of San Antonio (Texas): We continue to focus on both the external flow and internal feel of the patient experience. Patients want to have quicker access, more readily available options to schedule, and know when they finally arrive they are heard, seen, and met with compassionate customer service. 

Swannie Jett, DrPH. CEO of Park DuValle Community Health Center Inc. (Louisville, Ky.): We are doing a lot to enhance the patient experience. First, we began by conducting a patient survey to find out their needs in the community. We noticed patient times were longer than normal and providers were rescheduling patients more frequently than normal. We changed operations to improve the patient experience along with changing our EMR system. Finally, we have a couple of events for patients to make them feel appreciated.

AnneMarie Czyz, EdD, RN. President and CEO of Rome Health (N.Y.): What Rome Health is doing to boost the patient experience is:

• Energizing and empowering our patient care quality council. This council is constructed with two hospital representatives and the remainder of the group is community members representing all areas of the community we serve. Our strategic operating projects are reviewed with the council and revised based on their feedback and direction.
• Recruitment and retention of community based competencies physicians and advanced practice providers. We are focused on ensuring our providers are delivering services in the manner our community and region best connects. For example: our medical center physicians welcome individuals to the center who may not have appointments but are concerned with a condition. This open door is building trust with patients and their caregivers.
• CEO Community Forum, recently I conducted an hour-long session for an open forum on the top areas members of the community wanted to learn more about or concerns they had been expressing such as access to outpatient resources. This session could be attended in person or live stream.

Alan Fisher. CEO of Woodlawn Hospital (Rochester, Ind.): Patient experience is a relatively new concept that we have focused on for only the past 2 years. We have combined patient experience into our culture of safety so that focus is placed on patient centered care. Some of the initiatives we started are: quarterly patient experience champion; from Studer we adopted AIDET culture for the staff; developed “Patient Experience” questionnaire; established a patient/family committee of healthcare users among the community. 

Matthew Gibson, PhD. President and CEO of Siskin Hospital (Chattanooga, Tenn.): At Siskin Hospital for Physical Rehabilitation, we take a holistic approach to improving our patients’ experience, knowing that nurturing their mental and emotional wellbeing greatly impacts their physical rehabilitation outcomes. 

Through the comprehensive renovations of our inpatient rehab hospital, outpatient clinics, and soon our skilled nursing facility, we have created a more inviting and invigorating patient care atmosphere. These upgrades include adding art and interactive entertainment technology to all patient rooms, offering stimulating activities such as music and pet therapy, as well as providing nutritious meals.

We also value the healing power of being immersed in nature. The first of five planned Healing Gardens, specifically designed for both physical and emotional therapeutic use, recently opened for patients, visitors, and our associates to enjoy.

Individually, these initiatives may have a small impact, but together, they allow us to achieve our mission of giving back quality of life to each patient.

Janet Bennett. Vice President of Cardiology Services, Clinical Cardiology at Deborah Heart and Lung Center (Township, N.J.): In order to boost patient experience at Deborah Heart and Lung Center, we provide consistent communication across the organization from the executive team to front line team members.

Our patient experience scores and comments are reviewed at senior leadership, department leadership and department level staff meetings. We are listening to the voice of our patients by reviewing every patient comment with physicians and team members on a weekly basis. We trend those comments and put new processes in place when needed. We have department level work groups that take down silos by including every team member from every department who touches the patient; from the first encounter scheduling phone call to the discharge planner and everyone in-between.

The organization has invested in an ambulatory project that is focused on providing resources to ensure patient centric, team based care is provided at every encounter; where patient care needs are addressed as coordinated efforts among multiple healthcare providers and across settings of care.

We continue to provide education sessions to our team members, one example was a recent Physician’s Grand Rounds dedicated to communicating to our patients in a way that they can understand.

Brendan Carr, MD. CEO of Mount Sinai Health System (New York City): Patient experience is a fundamental aspect of our mission and intricately linked to safety, quality, engagement, and equity. To drive meaningful progress, we have dismantled traditional silos between these key areas, fostering cross-departmental collaboration and teamwork,” said Brendan G. Carr, MD, MA, MS, Chief Executive Officer, and Professor and Kenneth L. Davis, MD, Distinguished Chair, Mount Sinai Health System. “We believe this integrated approach has helped drive our performance and have resulted in improvements in inpatient HCAHPS from 2021 to 2023, putting Mount Sinai in the top 30% of systems across the country. Exceptional patient care begins with a supported and engaged workforce. We are actively listening to our employees and addressing their needs by eliminating barriers and empowering them to deliver the compassionate care that inspired their careers in healthcare. In addition, we are harnessing AI to anticipate and address potential gaps in patient experience. By predicting and addressing issues proactively, we can better meet the needs of our patients while they are still in our care. Our predictive models also help us understand which patients, especially from vulnerable and diverse backgrounds, might be less likely to provide feedback. Every aspect of our strategy ensures that we deliver care that is inclusive and equitable for all patients.

Valerie Mattison Brown. Chief Strategy Officer of Veterans Health Administration (Washington, D.C.): We are “talking” to Veterans to ask them what they want and need out of a healthcare delivery system. When Veterans enter the facility we want to help them and as they leave the facility we want to know what their experience was like. We accomplish this through conversation and through customer experience surveys. The VHA Chief Strategy Office, which I lead, specifically sends out a survey of Veteran enrollees which asks a series of questions regarding Veteran experience and factors which influence enrollee’s choice to use healthcare services including perceived health status, socioeconomic characteristics, demographics, planned use of VA services, and other factors. Our goal at the VHA is to not only talk to Veterans, but listen and implement changes that will make their experience better.

Pierre Monice. President of Loyola Medicine - MacNeal Hospital (Berwyn, Ill.): Enhancing the patient experience is one of our top priorities at Loyola Medicine — MacNeal Hospital. We believe it is critical to delivering high-quality healthcare. We are implementing a multifaceted approach to improve our services and ensure that every patient feels valued, respected, and cared for throughout their journey with us.

We are continuously gathering feedback through patient satisfaction surveys and focus groups. This data informs our initiatives and allows us to identify areas for improvement. In response, we have implemented changes to our discharge processes, reduced wait times, and enhanced our facilities to ensure a comfortable environment.

Additionally,  we are focused on enhancing community engagement to better understand the needs and preferences of our diverse patient population. By building strong partnerships with local organizations and community leaders, we can ensure that our services align with the expectations and cultural values of the individuals we serve.

Jose R. Sanchez. President and CEO of Humboldt Park Health (Chicago): At Humboldt Park Health we have a weekly Patient Experience Leadership meeting to review metrics received from our satisfaction surveys. During the process of becoming Health Equity Certified, we became aware of barriers to care and also barriers to communication. We started assigning our leadership team to round on patient floors to see what opportunities we had for better communication and patient involvement. With resources like language line, TeachMe3 – an excellent teach back method that explains medication and its side effects to the patient, and the five communication behaviors of Acknowledge, Introduce, Durations, Explanation and Thank You (AIDET), we are seeing survey responses steadily climb to the highest we've seen in the past 12 months! Our survey tool was another opportunity. We addressed the need for surveys to be available in multiple languages and added texting as a more expedient and reliable way to reach out to patients post-discharge. This is in addition to phone calls and paper surveys. With three strong methods of reaching our patient population, we have doubled our response rate!

Melisa Adkins. CEO of UofL Health - Mary & Elizabeth Hospital (Louisville, Ky.): We hold weekly meetings with our leaders both clinical and non-clinical since every interaction affects a patient’s experience in our hospital. Leader rounding also occurs daily and on weekends. If a patient has a concern for second level rounding, [that] occurs… meaning a follow-up round with hospital leadership. Patients and their families appreciate the attention to detail.

Theresa Dawson, DNP, MSN, RN. Chief Nursing Officer of Oaklawn Hospital (Marshall, Mich.): Patient experience has always been the cornerstone of our organization's mission statement. This, coupled with quality-of-care focus is at the forefront of our culture. We have many things in place that help boost the patient experience. A few of these initiatives are:

• Patient and family advisory council (PFAC) where we include patients and their loved ones in telling us what we do well and how we could make the experience better. This council has a working document for their goals and actions that then come back to the respective senior leaders for approval or consideration.

• Valet services were eliminated during Covid. After assessing this service post pandemic, we decided that this service, even at our small hospital, was very valuable to our patients/families coming to our hospital or the medical office building. We have since reinstated the service and received many compliments. If you begin their journey with satisfaction, the outcomes for their stay are more likely to do the same.
• We conduct unit level leadership rounds to assess patient satisfaction with their stay and address any barriers  that may arise. 
• We are currently studying the effects of sleep-deprivation on our older patients and its link to delirium. A team of advanced practice nurses are collecting data on the pre and post process changes proposed to reduce the number of times that patients are awakened at night when not necessary. Allowing our patients rest and resulting better mental health will boost the satisfaction of their stay.

While these are only some of the things we are doing at Oaklawn Hospital, it touches on the focus of patient experience as an important part of culture.

Michelle Stansbury. Vice President of Innovation and IT Applications at Houston Methodist: As hospital leaders, we rarely live through the fruits of our labor firsthand, yet I recently experienced being a patient at Houston Methodist when I underwent back surgery last month. My encounter from scheduling appointments to post-discharge recovery has been seamless, and I can see how the technology tools we have implemented are truly making a difference in the lives of patients and staff. Some of the technology we have in place to enhance the patient experience include: scheduling and check-in via the MyChart app, which allows patients to complete required documents before their visit; hospital admission and surgery day support through a virtual nurse through the inpatient room TV; use of a bio button for remote monitoring of vital signs at the bedside, which avoids interruption during sleep time; and hospital discharge and post op  support via a virtual nurse who offers a tailored conversation about discharge, medications and any follow-up care.

Having this unique opportunity to go through the experience we want for all of our patients truly puts in perspective the investment in digital technology we have made to allow our bedside clinical teams to do what they do best.  

During my recent hospital stay, my surgeon, operating room staff and the nursing staff were absolutely incredible. I cannot say enough good things about the care I received from everyone. I am especially proud of our Center for Innovation for all the work that has been done and that we continue to do to create an amazing patient experience.   

Shane Strum. President and CEO of Broward Health (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.): A little over a year ago, Broward Health reimagined our mission, vision and values. Our new mission statement – Exceptional care. Extraordinary compassion. Everyday excellence. – is core to who we are and how we are committing to each patient’s experience.

We knew from research that to optimize the patient journey we first needed to look internally at our employee experience, making a concerted effort to enhance the culture, better compensate employees and ensure Broward Health remains a wonderful place to work. As we had hoped, by focusing our efforts on our people and operations, we positively impacted the care our teams provide to our patients.

Since our mission, vision and values refresh, as well as standardization of many of our quality protocols, we have seen a significant increase in our Press Ganey patient satisfaction scores. Our HCAHPS overall score, which has increased almost 8%, continues to climb, and our quality metrics have made tremendous gains with an impressive reduction in hospital-acquired infections. We’ve also increased our workforce and seen an increase in the number of candidates seeking employment at Broward Health.

This year we will continue to spotlight our employees through our brand campaign while making every effort to optimize the workplace experience, because happy employees typically result in a satisfied patient.

Lien H. Le, MD, MBA. Vice President of Hospital Medicine and Associate Chief Medical Officer at Tampa (Fla.) General Hospital: Enhancing the patient experience throughout the continuum of care is at the core of what we do at Tampa General Hospital. Assembling designated care teams regionalized to specific units has positively impacted patients' perception of nursing and doctor communication. Achieving regionalization at a large quaternary hospital requires complex bed placement algorithms, which we collaborated with our partner, Palantir, to build. 

Our multidisciplinary team leverages Epic enhancements to automate tasks for discharge preparation and communication among care team members and to patients and their families. Pharmacy and physician teams continually innovate on patient-centered medication reconciliation and education. Patient-experience specialists and nursing teams anticipate and address needs with hourly rounding. Efforts to boost the patient experience extend beyond the hospital stay through advanced nurse navigation programs, digital care pathways, and other technology-enabled care coordination initiatives.

Adam Breslow, MD. President and CEO of Children’s Primary Care Medical Group (San Diego): With input from all 168 clinicians, we’ve spent the past year unifying our patient scheduling templates. This has dramatically diminished variation and allows patient self-scheduling for all visit types. We went live with this in late July with positive feedback from our families and minimal backlash from our clinicians. Our staff can focus on customer service as there is much less waiting on hold to speak with a representative. Our access metrics have already improved significantly.

Sophia G. Holder. Executive Vice President and CFO of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: CHOP’s financial strategies play an important role in enhancing the patient and family experience. For example, revenue cycle management is vital for our hospital’s financial health and directly impacts the patient and family experience in several ways: clear, understandable billing and financial communication reduces stress and confusion for families. Transparent processes and accessible financial counseling help families make informed decisions about their child’s care. And streamlined billing processes and accurate claims submission minimize delays and errors. 

This efficiency reduces the likelihood of unexpected bills, ensuring that families can focus on their child’s recovery. CHOP offers financial assistance programs and flexible payment options to support families facing financial hardships, as well as proactive support services to close the healthcare coverage gap and generate better health outcomes outside our hospital walls. 

We also fund projects in the community devoted to gun safety, anti-bullying, food insecurity, and reducing asthma triggers in homes. When families trust that they are being treated fairly and know that we care about their overall health and well-being, it strengthens their overall relationship with our hospital.

Sylvia Radziszewski. COO of University Hospitals Samaritan Medical Center (Ashland, Ohio): Providing a high-level patient experience means being thoughtful about what will make our patients more comfortable. A few examples of what we have done at a community hospital level to go above and beyond providing high-quality patient care includes providing patients with small white noise machines that allow them to choose what sound is most soothing. 

We also offer an essential oil “menu,” because we know patients have preferences about the scent they will find pleasant and comforting. In addition, we have our executive leaders round on patients, to welcome them and thank them for choosing our hospital, as well as letting them know how they can reach us if they need something. We also have our chief nurse, operations manager and nurse manager do rounding on patients, to ensure contact with them and their families. 

Our belief is that all caregivers at every level in the hospital are accountable and make the difference for excellence in each interaction – patient experience is about all of us. We also use a slogan -- #SamaritanStrong – that represents how our caregivers live in the community and are caring for their friends, neighbors and loved ones.

Laurin Cathey. Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer of Children's Minnesota (Minneapolis): At Children's Minnesota, we have an ambitious vision to be the region's premier independent pediatric provider. That vision can't be achieved without concerted effort to ensure the best possible experience for our patient families. With that commitment in mind, Children's Minnesota has a number of efforts currently underway to boost patient experience. 

First, we will implement a new EHR system that will create a more seamless patient experience by allowing greater interoperability between Children’s Minnesota and other systems. We also anticipate increases in records and charting efficiency with this change.

Second, across the organization we have implemented continuous improvement efforts to ensure all staff members are empowered to change systems and processes to better serve patient families. This includes assessing ways to improve patient flow while maintaining high quality care. These efforts are intended to reduce patient wait times, help us appropriately room patients more quickly which gets them connected to their care community more quickly. 

Finally, recognizing the role that mental health plays in the care of our patient families, we have committed to addressing these needs like other medical conditions. Children's Minnesota has added an inpatient mental health unit to support this patient population. Not only is this effort allowing us to serve mental health patients better but our practices are helping to shape how our entire health ecosystem is addressing mental illness.

Maureen Sintich, DNP. Chief Nurse Executive of Inova Health System (Falls Church, Va.): When I think about the patient experience and what makes the greatest impact, it goes beyond the scores. I can’t think about the patient experience without considering our culture, the members of our care team ensuring that they are set up for success. 

At Inova, if we’ve delivered on our care “mandate” to provide “a people centered, high value, seamless system of care” then we’ve set our people up for success as well. We do this through a series of care imperatives or “must haves” that apply to our people and our patients. They include providing a safe environment, collaborating in teams with equal voices, delivering care based upon the best evidence available, knowing and honoring what matters most and creating a culture of psychological safety. When we apply this framework to our processes, such as the integration of virtual care or leader rounding as 2 examples, then our patients will feel their caregivers' impact and our people will feel a sense of purpose.

Ron Place, MD. Regional President and CEO of Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center (Sioux Falls, S.D.): We’re focusing on access at Avera in order to optimize the patient experience as we strive to meet people where they are, regardless of where they are in their healthcare journey. Patient navigation is a key component to this, as we know that questions arise at any time of day, night, weekday or weekend. A key program for us is our cancer navigation program; a 24/7/365 resource available to patients impacted by cancer, their caregivers, loved ones and even rural community providers who may not work with patients in this space often. 

We also make it a priority to get newly diagnosed cancer patients into our clinics in a very short time window – generally within 48 hours. These are just two examples in our overall focus on access as it takes many forms at Avera, but we know it’s vital to providing the best experience possible.

Charles Powell, MD. CEO of Mount Sinai Respiratory Institute; System Division Chief of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai (New York City): In the Mount Sinai Respiratory Institute and Mount Sinai Hospital Doctors Faculty practices we focus on strategic implementation of advanced digital health technologies to transition patient care from a transactional, episodic model to a continuous, relationship-centric paradigm. The following examples highlight key technical and operational components that are implemented in several health system practices:

1. Integrated Digital Health Platforms: The Mount Sinai Digital and Technology Partners initiative focuses on establishing a cohesive and sustained patient-clinician relationship through the deployment of digital health platforms. These platforms are designed to interconnect various aspects of patient care, enabling a more comprehensive and continuous management of health.
2. Asynchronous Patient Access: The platforms enable patients to engage with healthcare services on a 24/7 basis, offering asynchronous access to medical consultations, appointment scheduling, and evidence-based wellness resources. This continuous accessibility reduces the dependency on physical visits and enhances patient autonomy in managing their health.
3. Optimized Clinical Workflow with Digital Enhancements: Within ambulatory clinics, digital tools are utilized to optimize the patient experience by dynamically monitoring and communicating wait times. This real-time data integration improves operational efficiency and patient satisfaction by minimizing idle time and enhancing the predictability of visit durations.
4. Digital Patient Experience Feedback Loop: Following clinical encounters, patients are prompted to complete a brief, digitally-administered survey designed to capture real-time feedback on their experience. This immediate feedback mechanism allows for rapid response to any patient concerns and supports continuous quality improvement initiatives within the practice.
5. Remote Patient Monitoring for Chronic Disease Management: For patients with chronic conditions such as COPD, a sophisticated RPM program is implemented. This program utilizes biometric sensors and data analytics to continuously monitor physiological parameters. The Condition Management team, in collaboration with pulmonary specialists, analyzes this data to detect significant deviations from baseline health status, enabling proactive interventions aimed at preventing acute exacerbations and maintaining overall health stability.

Wendi Goodson-Celerin, DNP. Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Executive of Tampa (Fla.) General Hospital: At Tampa General Hospital, our team recently received Magnet® recognition status from the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Magnet Recognition Program® for the fifth consecutive time. We are always focused on how we can enhance the patient experience through process improvements, and we have been particularly focused on two key initiatives. 

Our organization-wide TGH Nursing Innovation Challenge is a platform that provides an opportunity for all TGH team members to make their voices heard by devising innovative solutions to measurably improve the reliability and quality of purposeful inpatient hourly rounding and bedside shift reporting at our academic health system. Ideas generated in this Challenge are all reviewed and winning ideas are rewarded along with an opportunity to join the project implementation team. Through this challenge, our goal is to empower team members and to implement strategies to foster clear and effective communication between patients and healthcare providers, which enhances trust, safety and overall satisfaction.

Our Rapid Improvement Events (RIEs), led by our Quality/Performance Improvement Team, is another important initiative here at TGH. The RIEs have been incredibly successful and cover topics around improving patient experience HCAHPs, HAIs, HACs and PSI: 90 Patient Safety and adverse events. The RIEs around enhancing the patient experience were focused on Purposeful Hourly Rounding and Bedside Shift Report.

For the PHR RIE, there was a combination of Patient Family Advisory Council (PFAC) members, front-line registered nurses and patient care technicians who actively participated in Purposeful Hourly Rounding throughout several units of the hospital. These RIEs allow us to understand the current state of practice, day-to-day challenges and potential solutions for improving the frequency and quality of practice. Additionally, for the BSR RIE, there was a mix of day and night shift nurses throughout several units which allowed us to examine the change of shift report process, what is currently working well, and what can be improved to enhance a safe, collaborative, patient-centered bedside shift report process. Success in these important initiatives has led to front-line team engagement, identifying barriers, collaborative problem solving, innovative ideas, opportunities for improvement in processes and most importantly, a better understanding of our patients’ needs and expectations as we improve our practice.

Ryan Jennings. Chief Medical Officer of HSHS St. Anthony's Memorial Hospital (Effingham, Ill.): We have moved to a platform that allows text-based messaging. This has improved our response rates in areas where this platform is allowed.

K. Sarah Hoehn, MD, MBe. Chief Medical Officer of La Rabida Children’s Hospital (Chicago): In pediatrics, the patient experience includes families and caregivers.  To improve our patient experience, we focus on making sure that we are welcoming and inclusive at every single interaction.  In addition, we focus on the holistic approach. This includes improving our community partnerships, such as with Reach Out and Read, and community gardens, so children can receive books, fresh vegetables and immunizations all at the same time.

Adrian Moran, MD. Chief Medical Officer of Aurora St Luke's Medical Center (Milwaukee): It is a given that the care delivered to patients needs to be centered around compassion, excellence and respect (our core values). We have a multipronged and analytical approach to patient experience across our hospital. We know that patients coming through our ED and those over 65 years of age require the most attention. They have the lowest scores. We also know that sitting during encounters, pausing, and asking open ended questions enhance the encounter and those simple tactics drive improved listening and explaining the score for both doctors and nurses. Leader rounding on all units is also a major focus of attention, as is communication to family members for our patients over 80 years. By having clarity on the concrete tactics we have found real success.

Stephen DelRossi. CFO and Interim CEO of Northern Inyo Healthcare District (Bishop, Calif.): The executive staff recognized that like many communities, our patients often wait weeks or months to see the various practitioners. To this end, we expanded coverage for our clinics by increasing the hours and days that the clinics are open, by bringing in more staff, and by providing incentives to work efficiently.  We are also in the process of reducing no-shows by changing the method in which we contact the patients, using both technology and the human touch. Moreover, when we contact the patients, we inquire to see if anything changed (insurance, for example) that could lead to extended wait times while checking in so that the check-in process is quick and efficient. 

We have added staff to the authorization and referral department, patient access department, medical assistants, technicians, and other staff to make seeing our providers as easy and efficient as possible. We fully investigate any and all complaints and respond with both verbal conversation and written communications; oftentimes those issues are handled by the executive team, compliance, or the specific director where the issue arose.  We are in the process of overhauling the revenue cycle to provide better customer service with higher reliability in our billing practices.

Aundrea Styles, RN. CEO of Gateway Regional Medical Center (Granite City, Ill.): Boosting the patient experience in a hospital involves a multi-faceted approach that focuses on enhancing comfort, communication, care quality, and overall satisfaction. Here are some effective strategies:

1. Improve Communication

a. Staff-Patient Interaction

• Training programs: Provide training for medical and support staff in effective communication and empathy.
• Regular updates: Keep patients and their families informed about the patient's condition and treatment plans regularly.

b. Use of technology

• Patient portals: Implement user-friendly patient portals for easy access to medical records, appointment scheduling, and direct communication with healthcare providers.
• Telehealth services: Offer telehealth options for consultations, follow-ups, and remote monitoring.

2. Enhance comfort and convenience

a. Environment

• Clean and pleasant surroundings: Ensure the hospital is clean, quiet, and visually appealing.
• Comfortable accommodations: Provide comfortable patient rooms with amenities like TV, Wi-Fi, and adjustable beds.

b. Personalized care

• Individual attention: Tailor care plans to meet individual patient needs and preferences.
• Cultural sensitivity: Be mindful of cultural, religious, and personal preferences in patient care.

3. Streamline processes

a. Reduce Wait Times

• Efficient scheduling: Use advanced scheduling systems to minimize wait times for appointments and procedures.
• Quick triage: Implement effective triage systems to prioritize urgent cases and reduce emergency department congestion.

b. Simplify administrative tasks

• Easy Registration: Simplify the registration and discharge processes.
• Billing Transparency: Provide clear and detailed billing information and assistance with insurance claims.

4. Focus on quality of care

a. Skilled and Compassionate Staff

• Continuous training: Ensure ongoing professional development and training for medical staff.
• Recognition programs: Recognize and reward staff for exemplary care and service.

b. Patient safety

• Safety protocols: Adhere to strict safety and hygiene protocols to prevent infections and errors.
• Patient feedback: Regularly collect and act on patient feedback to improve care practices.

5. Provide comprehensive support

a. Emotional and psychological support

• Counseling services: Offer counseling and psychological support for patients and families.
• Support groups: Facilitate support groups for patients with similar conditions.

b. Holistic care

• Wellness programs: Introduce wellness programs such as physical therapy, nutrition counseling, and pain management.
• Integrative Medicine: Offer integrative medicine options like acupuncture, massage therapy, and mindfulness programs.

6. Engage patients and families

a. Patient involvement

• Decision-making: Involve patients in decision-making regarding their care plans.
• Education: Provide educational resources about conditions, treatments, and post-discharge care.

b. Family support

• Visitation policies: Create flexible visitation policies to support family involvement.
• Family accommodations: Provide facilities and amenities for family members staying with patients.

7. Implement feedback mechanisms

a. Regular surveys

• Patient satisfaction surveys: Conduct regular surveys to gauge patient satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.
• Post-discharge follow-up: Follow up with patients after discharge to address any concerns and gather feedback.

b. Suggestion systems

• Anonymous feedback: Allow patients and families to provide anonymous feedback.
• Suggestion boxes: Place suggestion boxes in accessible areas for ongoing feedback.

8. Leverage technology and innovation

a. Smart Hospital Systems

• EHRs: Use integrated EHRs for seamless information flow and coordination.
• AI and analytics: Utilize AI and data analytics to predict patient needs, personalize care, and improve outcomes.

b. Mobile Apps

• Patient apps: Develop mobile apps for appointment management, medication reminders, and health tracking.

9. Foster a positive hospital culture

a. Leadership and vision

• Strong leadership: Ensure hospital leadership is committed to patient-centered care.
• Mission and values: Clearly communicate the hospital’s mission and values focusing on patient experience.

b. Team collaboration

• Interdisciplinary teams: Promote teamwork among different departments to ensure comprehensive care.
• Regular meetings: Hold regular meetings to discuss patient care strategies and improvements.Implementing these strategies can significantly boost the patient experience, leading to higher patient satisfaction, better outcomes, and an enhanced reputation for the hospital.

Implementing these strategies can significantly boost the patient experience, leading to higher patient satisfaction, better outcomes, and an enhanced reputation for the hospital.