Elevate the Patient Experience and Create Transformational Encounters

Female nurse smiling down at boy patient holding a teddy bear

Our Four Focuses of a Leader model aims to simplify the focus of healthcare leaders in order to maximize their resources, amplify their impact, and increase their effectiveness.

No healthcare leader is immune from the overwhelming barrage of responsibilities and to-dos and all too often, they are left firefighting the urgent at the expense of what’s most important.

We start each Leadership Development initiative building a strong foundation on only four focuses to allow leaders to regroup, reclaim control of their time and attention, and regain traction on their most important goals.

Building personal and team resilience allows each individual employee to bring their absolute best selves to the work at hand and fostering employee engagement allows each department and team to be more cohesive, collaborative, and effective. The third focus of a leader, improving the patient experience, is one of the most important focuses, because our patients and customers are why we’re all here.

In healthcare, our work is solely dedicated to improving the health, wellbeing, and possibility of each and every patient we encounter, and the desire to improve and extend human life is a deep calling and mission for most who join the profession.

Bringing this essential work into focus is necessary for every healthcare leader, even if they aren’t involved directly in patient care. Every process, procedure, and administrative effort also serves the ultimate goal of extending and improving human life.

The sacredness of our call to help and serve our patients requires us to continually improve our efforts, add more connection and compassion to each interaction, and challenge ourselves to provide more than just transactional encounters.

We must strive now to make each moment of connection with our patients a truly transformational experience.

Let’s dive in and explore how to reimagine and recreate the patient experience.

Using Experience Design to Create Transformational Experiences

We are so lucky to have the opportunity in healthcare to transform people's lives. But, life-changing interactions don’t happen by accident, they happen by design. 

The process of “experience design” is an opportunity to go back to the drawing board and handcraft the patient experience through touchpoint and communication mapping.

It involves seeing the care experience from the patient’s perspective and trying to understand what the patient wants, needs, and desires with each touchpoint of care, and then daring to create a system and structure that provides for that need consistently and repeatedly. 

Patient experience design is intentionally pushing ourselves to deliver a “Wow” effect that really leaves a mark.

It’s thinking unconventionally and forgetting how things have “always been done” and starting to wonder “what if:”

What if the experience could be better?
What if we could creatively deliver more?
What if we could really make this experience amazing?

In healthcare, serving others may have been a key motivator in choosing our career.

We may have felt a deep calling to offer compassionate care and to help people overcome some of their most difficult challenges and attain a greater level of health and well-being.

We want to bring that same passion, purpose, and mission we had when we were starting out to every customer and patient interaction we have now.

Bringing Intentionality and Compassion to Every Customer Interaction

Of course, not all healthcare leaders are involved in direct patient care, but again, all work at a health system is ultimately dependent on providing a memorable patient experience that inspires patient loyalty and continues to build a desirable reputation at your health system.

Every department will have some role in improving the overall experience for a patient visiting your health system, but some departments may have customers beyond the bedside that can still be wowed with thoughtful experience design.

If your team doesn’t provide direct patient care, consider who your direct customer may be. Perhaps your customer is another department, an operational partner, another employee, or the patient after discharge.

No matter which type of primary customer you serve, the goal with this focus is to deliver an outstanding and transformational experience for them in every interaction.

This will require tapping into your deepest empathy and compassion, truly walking in their shoes, and working to deliver whatever that customer needs to feel valued, seen, and celebrated.

The Three Roles of the Leader in Experience Design

As the leader, you get to take on three roles within experience design: the role of the designer, coach, and innovator:

Designer: As the chief designer, you are working to set the vision and outline the process. You’re asking “How can we improve the experience” and “What are we going to do to deliver on what we’ve promised?” You’re setting the stage for you and your team to begin designing that transformational encounter and defining the steps you need to take to get there.
Coach: In the role of coach, you’ll work to educate your team on the new way. You’ll deliver training to everyone on how you’ll handle this encounter from here on out, and you’ll also share the purpose, the meaning, and “the Why” behind this change. You’ll then help your team develop any new skills and behaviors they’ll need to consistently deliver this new approach and truly succeed.
Innovator: Finally, as innovator, you’ll get to observe the effects of your new process and then continue to improve the experience as you go. You’ll get to receive real-time feedback from your patients and team and learn what’s working well and what still needs to be adjusted. You’ll get to continue to push the boundary and keep working to discover an even better way to really wow your patients and truly transform their lives.

Mapping the Customer Journey

To help you begin to design a transformational patient experience, start by choosing a specific customer journey.

You may choose to re-design the pre-patient experience—mapping everything the prospective customer experiences in your advertisements, website, patient call center, appointment scheduling, and interactions with customer service.

Or, you may map the patient journey at your clinic—from check-in at the front desk, to sitting in the waiting room, being called to meet with the provider, the provider interaction, check-out, and then patient follow-up after the appointment.

The important thing to be sure of, when you’re working through experience design, is that whichever stage of the journey you address, you’re being careful to include every interaction and touchpoint the patient has with your team and that you’re doing everything you can to really envision each step of the process through your customer’s eyes.

PRO TIP: Don’t forget to consider all of the environmental factors of the process as well as each potential interpersonal interaction:

What are your patients seeing, hearing, experiencing, and feeling in each step of the journey? 
Are they nervous or scared? How could you wow them with compassion and consideration?

Redesigning Each Touchpoint

How would your customer service team, nurses, and providers speak to a patient if they really considered the fear, trepidation, or overwhelm a patient may be experiencing even walking through the door of your organization?

Journey mapping through patient care touchpoints allows us to utilize our training and best practices around bedside manner and successful conversation models to ensure we are deeply connecting and supporting our patients with what they need most.

As your work through these touchpoints, don’t leave out any small detail! This is your chance to work through every opportunity you have to elevate your patient’s time with you and help them feel incredibly valued and well cared for.

Here are some prompts and questions to consider as you redesign your customer touchpoints:

Do any of your patients and customers have special needs you can be prepared to accommodate? How can you preemptively and generously offer additional means of support on their visit?

Are there items you can provide such as a warm blanket for an elderly patient that would add a small boost of comfort while they’re in the office for a scary procedure?

Could you help your patients by offering options with more or less technology to meet their needs? Maybe some patients prefer paper intake forms rather than scanning a QR code on their phone, or some patients might need audio aids to help them fill out their initial patient questionnaire.

Perhaps some patients would benefit from a customer service concierge to help them complete the required paperwork, getting assistance by phone or 1:1 in the office before the visit begins.

How does your team greet patients and their families when they enter your facilities and departments. Do they feel welcomed and reassured?

Are there comfy chairs and ergonomically supportive options that can be used by guests of all sizes and guests with injuries?

Think about everything in the surrounding environment that could make the visit more appealing or more troubling. Attend to those factors with just as much care as you put into adding the personal touch.
We encourage you to reach out to existing patients to ask what they’re really loving about their experience with your organization and what would show them you truly care about them and were going the extra mile.
Also, read through any and all patient reviews you’ve received through surveys and online platforms and look for small changes that would make a big difference for your patients. Then, work with your team to implement those changes.

Experience design and design thinking are so effective because we get to step out of our normal ways of operating and re-create the patient experience completely.

When we take on this process, we get to freely imagine what else could be possible and re-think how things have always been done.

We get to tap into our deep empathy, compassion, and desire to serve our patients and use that heart and drive to insist on a better way.

Rave Reviews and Fierce Advocates

Patients who come to your organization after benefitting from your carefully crafted and thoughtfully designed touchpoints will rave about their experience to others and advocate fiercely on your behalf.

Their testimonies about the care, consideration, and intentionality of your team will compel new patients to come to your organization and will increase the loyalty of your existing patients, too.

Take the time to work through all of the key processes at your health system and start redesigning the experience now.

Draw on the wisdom and first-hand experience of your team to catch anything you don’t see happening.

You may find it’s best to schedule an offsite or grab a few hours each quarter for a small staff retreat dedicated to working through this design thinking process.

Your goal is to instill in your team a passion for always looking for a better way. You will nurture this focus in your team by modeling the behavior, asking for their ideas, and celebrating the changes your team makes for their patients. 

In addition, you will need to lead the process of documenting, communicating, training, and reenforcing the changes with your entire team so that they become new habits.

Improving the Patient Experience Ultimately Improves the Bottom Line

Any effort you put into improving the patient experience will pay back in dividends.

This is such an important focus of a leader because without our customers and our patients, we have no business. 

It’s our great privilege and responsibility to provide patient care, so we must become willing and dedicated designers, coaches, and innovators who take this process seriously and bring our best thinking and ideas to the table.

Give this process the true time, attention, and dedication it deserves. You won’t regret it!

If you’re ready to begin elevating and improving the patient experience at your health system, give our team a call today.

Let’s level up our leadership and commit to providing our customers numerous opportunities for transformation and to doing what it takes to serve our patients exceptionally well.