In healthcare C-suites across the country, patient experience is a top priority. From medical practices and ambulatory surgery centers to large hospital systems, leaders are rethinking every stage of the patient journey.
Recent studies suggest that outpatient settings are reaping the benefits of digital innovation and stronger communication tools. Inside hospital walls, however, patient experience challenges remain. Coordinating care, sharing information and scaling services are common obstacles, even for advanced healthcare organizations.
During an executive roundtable sponsored by Vituity at Becker’s 13th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable, healthcare leaders discussed patient experience challenges and potential solutions.
Four key takeaways were:
- To improve the patient experience, organizations and teams must align around a common goal. Transparency is key to success. According to Imamu Tomlinson, MD, chief executive officer of Vituity, everyone must march toward the same goal: ensuring that patients have the best possible experience. This requires breaking down organizational silos. One participant explained that when providers, nurses and techs understand the goals, metrics and what’s important, they have a greater stake in patient experience outcomes.
- Real-time information is essential for successful service recoveries. Healthcare leaders nationwide keep a close eye on HCAHPS survey results. Yet, one leader characterized this CMS survey instrument as “the worst thing that’s ever happened to patient experience.” Since the survey data is delayed, it’s nearly impossible to react quickly in meaningful ways. In addition, HCAHPS characterizes experience as a metric to improve, rather than focusing on each step of the patient journey.
Service recovery is only possible when teams have actionable, real-time patient experience information. Vituity’s eQI platform measures patient feedback while people are in the emergency department or shortly after leaving. “It gives us real-time information to recover the patient experience and learn how to change our behavior,” Theo Koury, MD, president of Vituity, said.
- Front-line innovation is key to identifying and addressing patient experience gaps in scalable ways. Leading healthcare organizations recognize they must tap into clinicians’ experiences to develop solutions that improve the patient experience.
For example, at a medical center in the Southwest, the organization’s leaders needed to address high readmissions among congestive heart failure patients. In pursuit of this goal, this medical center hired two medics to serve that population. They have prevented multiple readmissions and patients are pleased with the service.
However, the chief operating officer said, “I can’t scale this [human intervention] to every patient.” This is where technology can play an important role. During COVID, Vituity developed Relay Health, a virtual navigation platform that augments the work of human care navigators.
“It holds the patient’s hand when they leave the hospital, ensuring they get their appointments, prescriptions and any other needs,” Dr. Koury said. “We were only able to develop this because we tapped into front-line providers’ experiences, understood the gaps and addressed them.”
- Technology has the potential to make healthcare more human. Technology is proving useful for improving the patient experience during familiar healthcare encounters, like annual physicals. With hospital visits, however, every experience is different. As a result, the human component of care is critical.
One roundtable participant wondered whether AI and technology tools could transform the patient experience by freeing caregivers to spend more time with people. Another participant echoed that sentiment. “The things we need to do are human things and we do that one patient at a time,” he said. “The human touch is what makes people feel wonderful about their experience.”
