International
Centering and Elevating the Patient Experience
Our Patient Experience Program at Cedars-Sinai has one goal: to create ease for our patients.
Our efforts are inspired by Cedars-Sinai’s founding credo, “To be a blessing.” This is a fundamental part of who we want to be for those who trust us with their care. We have built a strong culture across our organization where patient experience is central to our hospital’s daily conversations and core functions.
We define “patient experience” as the patient’s perception of everything that happens to them and around them during their time with us. The emphasis here is on perception, or how the patient feels about their time with us. This means we must consistently differentiate between the experience we believe we have created and how the patient actually perceives their care.
Understanding those differences is where patient feedback comes into play. We gather an exceptional amount of patient insights that tell us what our patients appreciate and what they want us to improve, and then we address that feedback through pragmatic improvement efforts. This robust mechanism helps us ensure that the patient’s voice is always at the core of what we do. We don’t want to make any substantive moves in our organization without the patient’s voice being represented.
With all of the gathered feedback, we strive to focus on two continuous paths: We celebrate the things the hospital does well, and we work on the opportunities for improvement our patients have identified. These various projects and programs are housed within our Patient Experience framework and built into four channels.
The first channel is everything that contributes to amplifying the patient voice. This involves projects and process improvements designed to make sure we are continuously listening to our patients in the way they want to tell us their feedback. We offer many different opportunities for patients to share how they feel with us, and we have a variety of ways to distribute that information around the organization.
Alan Dubovsky, Vice President and Chief Patient Experience Officer
Here’s one example: When we are exploring a new idea, making a process change, or trying to create a new function or service, we consult with our online patient and family advisor program, which is made up of over 25,000 patients who volunteer their time and insight. We run the potential change by them and ask, “Does it sound right? What are we missing? What should we do differently?” This points us in the right direction, and on more than one occasion, it has saved us from making unwanted mistakes.
Because we are passionate about understanding our patients, we want to listen to them differently. Historically, patient feedback in hospitals and clinics has been driven by data: The organization sends out surveys with specific questions and then tabulates the responses.
This familiar approach has a certain logic. However, it is inherently limited. When we push people to answer specific questions, we often miss what they really want to tell us. We inadvertently squeeze their world into our boxes. So, we are deemphasizing numerical data and focusing instead on stories and on empowering patients to tell us what they want us to know about their experience.
As you would imagine, building a story-driven platform comes with its own set of challenges. Our existing systems are largely English-driven and technology-based, but many of our patients don’t fit into those domains. We challenge ourselves to be as creative as possible in finding new ways to hear those voices.
The second channel in our program is devoted to elevating the patient experience. We partner with leaders and staff in our patient care areas to be a resource for our caregivers in improving the patient experience. To make sure that we are continuously providing our staff with the right skills and coaching opportunities, our team goes to great lengths to organize and facilitate all projects that strive to impact our metrics and improve the patient experience.
The third channel is focused on fostering the practical skills that will help our staff improve the patient experience. Our team continuously provides our workforce of more than 20,000 people with tools to keep getting better at how they interact with patients. This includes the ways we onboard new employees and how we equip them to interact with patients, handle difficult situations and create strong patient interactions. From virtual skill-building to in-person coaching and shadowing, our team offers many unique opportunities for team members to keep developing their skills.
The fourth channel is made up of all our foundational and core patient experience programs. This ranges from recognition efforts to our annual Patient Experience Week, which is a time for us to rally the entire organization behind the purpose of improving experiences for all people, every day.
These four channels—powered by our superb Patient Experience team—have helped us build a tremendously strong platform for continuous improvement. However, just as with patients, our success depends on meeting staff where they are.
We have learned that if we come in with a new initiative that sounds like new work, it is likely to fail. Most staff have too much on their plates to take on ambitious new projects. Accordingly, our philosophy is to build programs that are attuned to their day-to-day reality. We piggyback onto existing processes and opportunities. We don’t ask our staff to reimagine their roles; instead, we support them in refining how they work. We make life easier for our team members so they can, in turn, create ease for our patients.
Our work is far from done. However, from every indication, our efforts are yielding meaningful results. The responses from patients are exceedingly positive. Our patient satisfaction scores in areas like our medical practices are consistently in the top 10% of hospitals in the nation.
We are always striving to provide the ideal experience for every patient and their loved ones. As I mentioned at the outset, we aspire to make life easier for our patients. In a perfect world, we would know how hard or easy Cedars-Sinai is for every person in our care. That may not be practical today—our organization cares for a large volume of patients—but with persistence, creativity and a bit of luck, we will find ways to get closer to an answer.
