Driving Organizational Change to Create Better Patient Experiences

Health systems have been increasingly focused on enhancing the patient experience. The patient experience is more than just a satisfaction survey—it’s really about providing safe, high-quality, patient-centered care. And in order for our patients to be provided with better experiences, there are some things that we really need to know about in order to drive meaningful change within our organizations. So, what can we as healthcare executives and physicians do to transform our organizations and place the focus back on the patient where it belongs?

Welcome to The Clinical Divide. I’m Dr. Kevin Campbell, a Duke-trained cardiologist and CEO of the health data startup PaceMate. Every week, this Inside Digital Health™ video series examines healthcare technology and medicine’s top news. I bring the views that help physicians and healthcare executives bridge the clinical divide.

Enhancing the patient experience is not a new trend or buzzword of the moment. However, as a whole, healthcare has really failed to make much headway in this arena. But as much as physician leaders and CEOs talk about how important it really is, what’s actually being done to achieve better patient experiences today? This year, the Strategic Insights report from Press Ganey gives leaders suggestions on how to make big changes to do just that. Whether the changes are created as a way to embrace the newly proposed value-based care models or to address consumerism among patients, as physicians and CEOs, it is really our responsibility to continue to innovate and find ways to improve our organizations.

In the report, Press Ganey suggests that one way to improve is for organizations to undertake a critical self-assessment process by developing an enterprise-wide survey that includes audits across multiple performance domains, leadership surveys and stakeholder interviews. These activities will really help us find opportunities to improve and identify obstacles that we must overcome to get better.

The report also recommended that organizations develop an analysis of performance interdependencies, which really help us to better understand the relationships and interdependencies across safety, quality, patient experience and workforce engagement.

Most importantly, by identifying measurable targets, we can create actionable goals that are carefully prioritized in order of importance and urgency, so that we can get better fast.

As CEOs and physician leaders, one of the things that we can do to make us more effective is for us to develop an integrated dashboard to maintain a comprehensive view of the organization. This type of 50,000 ft. view is really absolutely crucial for driving change.

CEOs and physicians must drive change together and must work diligently to put our organizations in a better position that will allow us to be successful. We must engage employees at all levels and lead by example. The only way to create meaningful change and truly improve the patient experience is from the top down. We must inspire our employees and staff and share our vision—if we do not, change does not happen.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Clinical Divide. Until next week, I’m Dr. Kevin Campbell, for Inside Digital Health™.

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