Seven leaders overseeing patient experience at hospitals across the country discussed their organization's goals for 2020 with Becker's Hospital Review.
Editor's note: Responses have been edited for clarity and length.
Question: What are your patient experience goals for 2020?
Sven Gierlinger. Senior Vice President and Chief Experience Officer at Northwell Health (New York City): As the largest care provider in New York state, Northwell Health is committed to making a large system feel small to each and every patient. Our goal is create an effortless and personalized experience across the continuum of care. To achieve this goal, we are focusing on:
• Hospital star ratings — striving to achieve a CMS 5-star hospital rating at every location
• Digital patient experience — leveraging innovative technology solutions to deliver on individual needs and preferences
• Consumer access redesign — reinventing access to care, people and information at the right time, in the right place
Lisa Allen, PhD. Chief Patient Experience Officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore): We believe that the most important factor affecting a positive patient experience is good communication and engagement between the care team and the patient and their loved ones. This will remain our focus in 2020.
We will continue to train and coach our care teams in the skills of good communication and patient engagement principles, and we will look for new ways to hear the voice of our diverse patient population.
Sharon Royne. Senior Vice President of Human Resources of CHI Franciscan Health (Tacoma, Wash.): In 2020, our goal is to combine high-quality medicine with kindness, respect and compassion to help people truly begin to heal. That means treating patients like people first. We will support every one of our 12,000-plus employees to deliver on that promise.
This goal extends beyond our hospitals and clinics and into the communities we serve. CHI Franciscan is committed to using the healing power of humanity and human kindness to build healthy communities, increase access to care and ensure everyone who needs great care can get it.
Shannon Phillips, MD. Chief Patient Experience Officer of Intermountain Healthcare (Salt Lake City): Our office of patient experience vision statement for 2020 is: 'At Intermountain, fulfilled and empowered caregivers help people live the healthiest lives possible by co-creating a human experience that is caring, safe, effective, affordable and accessible for all.'
Our first community is our caregivers. We'll have the largest impact on our patients' experience by focusing on caregiver experience and engagement.
We'll be intentional in our safety and quality work by looking through the lens of our patients' perspective.
Amy Compton-Phillips, MD. Executive Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer of Providence (Renton, Wash.): Our 2020 focus is on creating a seamless patient experience.
Traditional healthcare organizations are focused on patient experience in each venue of care —think in the doctor's office, urgent care, in the hospital and home care. The challenge is that patients experience care across all of those venues. We inadvertently disappoint patients and/or add complexity to their lives not only with an individual provider in front of them, but with gaps in communication and coordination between providers.
In 2020, we are working not only to ensure venue-specific care is ideal, but also that we are smoothly and seamlessly passing the baton between providers. This gives patients a compassionate, predictable and highly personalized experience across the entire healthcare value chain.
Richard Evans. Senior Vice President and Chief Experience Officer of NewYork-Presbyterian (New York City): In 2020, NewYork-Presbyterian is looking to build on the successes of the last three years in continuing our journey of improving the patient experience and associated metrics.
We also want to improve access to our physicians and services and respond more nimbly to the expectations of our increasingly savvy healthcare consumers, to deepen of our culture of respect, inclusion and belonging, and finally, to support our teams with the implementation of a new EMR across our enterprise.
Katie Logan. Vice President of Patient Experience and Chief Consumer Officer of Piedmont Healthcare (Atlanta): Overall, our goals surround reducing the friction for our customers as they access and navigate the health system, while also continuing to better personalize the interactions and overall experience.
Ultimately, our long-term vision is to create a one-of-a-kind, hassle-free experience. We'll achieve this through a few priority areas:
• Implement a paperless, self-service registration and check-in process for the ambulatory and hospital environments.
• Continue expanding access and leveraging self-service tools to strengthen Piedmont's digital front door, including the expansion of online scheduling capabilities to ancillary services.
• Transform the call center experience and personalize the experience for customers through continued deployment of customer relationship management capabilities.
• Develop an insights-driven, systemwide customer service program leveraging more dynamic customer surveying.