Patient Experience 10 Years Later: Looking Back and Leaping Forward

Ten years ago, when Cleveland Clinic hosted its first Patient Experience Summit, the topic was undeveloped and the goal was a little blurry.

“We thought it was important to start the conversation and knew patient experience would be an industry differentiator, but we really didn’t know where we were headed,” says summit Co-Chair Adrienne Boissy, MD, MA, Chief Experience Officer at Cleveland Clinic.

From that first summit with a couple of hundred caregivers (mostly from Cleveland Clinic) to the 2018 summit with thousands of participants from around the world, patient experience has become part of an international dialogue.

“This summit is about how we can, and should, deliver quality care around the world — how safe and exceptional care leads to better experiences for our caregivers and patients,” says summit Co-Chair K. Kelly Hancock, DNP, RN, NE-BC, Executive Chief Nursing Officer at Cleveland Clinic.

This year, the Patient Experience: Empathy + Innovation Summit, hosted May 13-15 in Cleveland, will look back at the past decade. Presenters will share what strategies and tactics they’ve attempted to improve experience, what has worked and what hasn’t.

“We need to get international agreement on best practices — the basics — so we can move on and innovate,” says Dr. Boissy. “Once we confirm what we should be doing, we can design what we could be doing.”

The hunger for empathic, customized, digital experience is here, she says, which is why Cleveland Clinic has partnered with the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) for this year’s summit.

According to Dr. Boissy and Hancock, attendees won’t want to miss these highlights:

Victor Montori, MD, a Mayo Clinic physician researcher who authored the provocative book “Why We Revolt: A Patient Revolution for Careful and Kind Care,” will address the need for compassion, empowering patients and rebuilding healthcare.

Geoff Colvin, CBS Radio commentator, Fortune magazine senior editor and best-selling author of “Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know that Brilliant Machines Never Will,” will explain how compassion and empathy are paramount in a world of robots and smart technology.

Christine Porath, a renowned consultant for the likes of Google and Marriott, TED speaker, Associate Professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and author of “Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace,” will discuss the impact of incivility and how to build a respectful, thriving workplace.

Toby Cosgrove, MD, former CEO and President of Cleveland Clinic, and now Executive Advisor for Google Cloud Healthcare, will reflect on today’s digital experience explosion and the early days of patient experience at Cleveland Clinic, when he was first challenged about empathy by a student at Harvard Business School.

Preconference sessions will convene two think tanks — one on defining digital empathy and another on the rise of consumerism, and what each means for patient experience.

Networking opportunities will be expanded this year to ensure attendees have plenty of face-to-face interaction.

For more information and to register, visit empathyandinnovation.com.