Adrienne Boissy, MD, chief experience officer at Cleveland Clinic, outlined the most important factors for developing a great patient experience in an interview with Becker's.
When asked about the patient experience "never events" that hospitals should eliminate, Dr. Boissy said Cleveland Clinic thinks about the following promises to patients:
1. We will keep you safe.
2. We will partner with you.
3. We will care for you as a person.
4. We will make it easier.
She contends that "never events" in the patient experience are the failure to achieve those four promises to patients. That could look like:
1. When we make mistakes that harm (emotionally and physically) and we don't disclose. When we don't communicate effectively.
2. When we don't include the patient as a member of the care team.
3. When we don't know what matters most to those we care for. When we don't empathize.
4. When we make or cause avoidable suffering through complex and fragmented access, cumbersome or incoherent billing, getting and making an appointment, prolonged and unexplained delays or waits and poor service.
"Interestingly, taking a page from high reliability and safety, we run root cause analyses on experience failures," she said. "We grade them in line with SERS events in terms of severity. This has raised visibility and evaluation of experience failures to the credibility and diligence we apply to safety failures."