Dr. James Merlino became Chief Experience Officer in 2009. Merlino defined the patient experience as "everyone and everything people encountered from the time they decided to go to the Clinic until they were discharged.” He worked to make patient experience insights more tangible by asking the question: “How can processes and metrics drive improvements in the patient experience.” He identified three critical areas: effective processes, caring caregivers, and engaged patients.
Consider these questions as you read and reflect on this case (and the other articles posted on this topic). Remember to interact by replying to posts, rather than posting individually your responses.
- What is the Cleveland Clinic’s overall strategy for improving value for patients?
- Are there examples of what Cleveland Clinic are doing well, or areas where they may still need improvement?
- What do you think of other efforts presented in the class schedule, or examples of your own, that make you feel like there is a “patient first” transformation in place or are you skeptical? Explain.
Here are a couple of interesting articles related to the cases and questions. One is posted from the NYT in 2011 (the HBR article was written in 2013, but began about the same time). "Test for Hospital Budgets: Are the Patients Pleased?" The article claims that winning praise from patients has become a pressing — and often elusive — obsession for NYU and for hospitals nationwide. In the coming months, Medicare will start taking patient satisfaction into account when reimbursing hospitals. Disgruntled patients will mean reduced revenue, a frightening prospect for hospitals already facing empty beds because of the recession and pressure from insurers to hold down costs.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to iCare at the University of Toronto Medical Center, there is another view from James Merlino ("Fanatics" author) on "How to Improve Patient Satisfaction Scores By Using Data" - click on one of the tags in this article for many more examples.