5 Ways to Energize Your Patient Experience Strategy

There is a lot of chatter these days about improving the patient hospital experience. Ask any C-suite hospital executive to list his or her priorities and some variation of patient experience (patient satisfaction, patient safety, quality care, etc.) will likely top the list.

Money is the root of some of this interest. The federal Affordable Care Act and the creation of Accountable Care Organizations have healthcare stakeholders looking at ways to measure improvement in the healthcare delivery system. It's easy to see why. The soon-to-be-implemented value-based purchasing program will pay hospitals for their actual performance on quality measures rather than just for the reporting of the measures. That means performance will be attached to federal dollars.

But here’s the rub: no one is quite sure what really makes a patient hospital experience a good one. A few years back hospitals started offering amenities such as Internet access, parenting classes, and concierge services all in the name of making patients happy. Lately the patient experience debate has centered on process-driven metrics such as reducing emergency department wait times or improving the time it takes to get a patient from registration to a bed, or from a bed to the front door.

While the ACA has tipped its hat in favor of measureable goals, Jason Wolf, executive director at the Bedford, Texas-based Beryl Institute, argues that while improving the patient experience “should take some process into account, it really needs to be broader and more strategic. Successful organizations see improving the patient experience not as an initiative but as something that becomes intrinsic to the organization.”

The Beryl Institute, which consults with hospitals about patient experience, recently released a survey about what hospitals are doing to improve the patient experience. Wolf noted that for all the talk about the importance of the patient experience, more than 40% of the respondents said a committee has the primary responsibility and accountability for the patient experience and that such committees meet on average about once a month.

He doesn’t think that is the ideal model. “We’re talking about systemic change from top to bottom. Someone with power, like the CEO or COO, has to take ownership.”

I asked Wolf to cook his advice down to the five most important tips a hospital can use to improve its patient experience. Here are his suggestions:

1. Be clear on what you are doing and why.

Healthcare reform has introduced new market pressures and opportunities. It’s okay to admit that you are implementing this change or that process because there’s money involved. In 2013 the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, or HCAPHS, will be used not only to measure performance on quality measures but also to establish how much a hospital will be paid for meeting the performance standards. Everyone in the hospital, from the mailroom to the boardroom, needs to understand that patient perceptions are directly related to meeting standards and earning quality payments.

2. Establish leadership vision and support

According to the Beryl Institute survey, 72% of the respondents cited strong, visible support from the top as a critical to the success of improving the patient experience. There needs to be a dedicated lead with the power and the ownership to move the process forward.

3. Cultural alignment is systemic

Understanding what a patient values or needs is a systemic process. Wolf tells the story of one medical center that looked at its surgery process and discovered that each surgical patient came into contact with 30 different departments. “The patient is only having one experience but the medical center needed to align the interests and culture of those 30 different departments into that single experience.”

4. Get everyone engaged

One of his clients told Wolf that the key to their success was helping staff rediscover the passion that brought them to healthcare in the first place – care and service to others. It’s a simple message that resonates across departments and job titles. Cold hard cash can motivate, too. About 60% of the survey respondents said patient experience efforts are tied to individual performance reviews and bonuses.

5. It takes relentless commitment and continuous action.

The current thinking is that there is a ‘there’ that you get to with the patient experience. Wolf says there is not a ‘there.’ Improving the patient experience take continuous effort and relentless commitment by everyone. Hospitals want to get to a point where improving the patient experience isn’t a goal, it is simply the nature of the organization.

With federal payments tied to results, patient experience is more important than ever, HealthLeaders Media Industry Survey 2011 confirms.