Blog Entries
Stop Punching Patients in the Face, 2: Self-Inflicted Wounds
When we think that being right is an acceptable defense for being rude, we are losing more than we realize.
Stop Punching Patients in the Face, 1: Process Problems
While we might not purposely antagonize patients, we seem to be unaware when we do things that aggressively or passive-aggressively confront patients.
When the Map Doesn’t Match the Terrain: Why Patterns Don’t Always Work
Often the hardest part of a presentation is not explaining the differences that we see, but explaining the differences that we don’t see.
Lingering impacts of COVID on PX: Part 3, Our Communities
Hospitals and the communities they serve have a symbiotic relationship that COVID has tested. If we don’t review and reinvigorate that connection, we could lose it.
Lingering impacts of COVID on PX: Part 2, Staffing Impacts
How health systems managed the increased demand for staff has had lingering impacts on how hospitals deliver on patient experience.
Lingering impacts of COVID on PX: Part 1, Transition in Care Space
COVID has left a lasting impact on healthcare and we have not examined its impact on the patient experience.
The Nature of Improvement 3: Improvement and accountability
Too often it seems organizations would rather hold people responsible for decisions than fostering an environment that celebrates improvement.
The Nature of Improvement 2: Non-Incremental and Non-linear
Improvement can come like a bolt from the blue or a thief in the night, but rarely one step at a time.
The Nature of Improvement: Hospitals versus Clinics
Organizations struggle to improve often because they think strategies are one-size-fits-all, but that rarely works in PX.
The Problem with Loyalty, Part 2: Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze
We chase loyalty without asking what this work is supposed to get us and whether it is worth the effort.
The Problem with Loyalty, Part 1: What Is In a Word
Healthcare talks a lot about loyalty, but rarely define the word in any useful way. As a result, it is difficult to create loyalty in any meaningful way.
100ish Episode
A review of out-takes, examples, and things that have not made the final cut over the past 100 essays…
Validation: What Makes Measures Useful?
As PX strives to be taken seriously as an important aim of healthcare, we need to consider how to measure our successes and failures.
What Patients Mean When They Talk About Access
Patients expect access to be more nuanced and personal which conflicts with how hospitals define access.
What Hospitals Mean When They Talk About Access
Why how hospitals define “access” does not speak to patient needs.
Challenges with Building Compliance: Engaging Leaders with Compliance
Building muscle-memory with PX work includes working with leaders on their expectations and responsibilities in this space.
Challenges with Building Compliance: Connecting Cause with Effect
Connecting the dots for staff helps build value and commitment to process improvement strategies.
Challenges with Building Compliance: Time
Getting people to adopt new processes to improve experiences starts with addressing their fear that they don’t have the time to improve.
Connotations and Denotations
Communication can become muddy when people infer unintended meaning from words.
Perception and Reality: Data Does Not Speak for Itself
The gap between perceptions and reality, or facts and their meaning can drive a failure to communicate between patients and providers.
Transactional Call-and-Response: A Real-World Example
Why does it seem like we end up in bad places when all that we do seems to make sense in the moment?
Return to Transactional Communication: The Provider-Sized Hole
Communications can spiral and generate more heat than light, when people lean heavily on stereotypes and past experiences.
Return to Transactional Communication: The Patient-Sized Hole
When we complain about the shortcomings of others, are we really defining our own outsized expectations?
Fallacy of Non-Patient Facing
Realize that all work faces the patient, even if you never talk to one.
What Else My Dogs Teach Me about PX
Reframe your discussions about patient experience to make sure you are responsive to your audience’s needs.
Why PX Efforts Fail: Lack of Integration
If PX work is not integrated with the work and messaging of a system, it will be treated as fluff and not truly important.
Why PX Efforts Fail: Lack of Focus
Failure is an outcome with many possible causes. Diagnosing the reasons can prevent making the same mistake twice.
Tips on Public Speaking: Putting People First
Whether talking to an audience or a single person or patient, focus on putting their wants and needs at the forefront of any communication.
Tips on Public Speaking: Asking Questions
Too often speakers ask audiences lazy questions or ones to further the speech rather than engage with the audience.
Wither the Woodshed, 2: The Power of We
Redirecting blame-and-shame energy starts with considering how you talk about who is responsible.
How Can Healthcare Be Science-Driven, But Not Data-Driven
It may seem odd, but being data-driven and science-driven are not the same thing and can lead one to different places.
Scripting in an Improv World
Failure to effectively communicate on effective communication can lead to ineffective communication.
Wither the Woodshed
Even organizations that imagine themselves as collaborative seem to drag people to the woodshed for beatings when scores decline. Why?
What My Dogs Teach Me About PX
Lessons on patient experience are all around us, even in places that aren’t obvious.
Why Can’t We Just Be Nice, 2: Structure
When setting foundational work covering all employees, organizations are not always structured to be successful.
Healthcare’s Low Self Esteem Problem
It may be hard to believe, but healthcare has low self-esteem and it is preventing it from improving its experience.
Why Can’t We Just Be Nice, 1: Definitions and Mindset
While a commitment to being nice is laudatory, it is often a slippery concept that is difficult to attain.
AI in PX: The Downside
While AI can be a boon, without attentive oversight, its use can be misguided, illegal, or off-putting.
Home-Brewing Surveys, 3: The Question is the Question
Question construction seems deceptively easy. Questions that provide actionable results require attention to detail.
Home-Brewing Surveys, 2: How Long is Long
People obsess with survey length when they should be focused on survey value and reducing the obstacles to participation.
Home-Brewing Surveys, 1: Is It the Right Answer to Your Question
Before setting out to create and execute a survey, one should determine if it is the right move or just an obvious wrong move.
Being Nice is Not Enough
“Be nice” cannot be the objective of a successful service action plan because it lacks the substance required to be a useful action plan.
PX101: Managing the Change Management
Part of your task is convincing to leadership how hard lasting change is, even as you convince staff how easy it is to change.
Pursuit of Perfection, 2: Overfitting
Some see the pursuit of perfection as an effort to provide crystal clarity, but this often makes things less clear.
Pursuit of Perfection, 1: Mission Creep
We know why we fail, but why can’t we avoid those points of failure?
PX Heal Thyself
Before we get upset in the defensiveness of others, let us understand our own defensiveness.
Survey101: Why Are You Doing This?
Here are the questions you should answer before asking other people survey questions.
PX101: Focus on the Right Thing
Messaging from leaders that failures will be punished and successes will be forgotten underscores why so much PX work flounders.
Real World Implications of Statistical Concepts, 4: Bias in Self-Surveying
The road to data hell often begins with, “Just run a simple survey to verify compliance.”
Where does PX Fit? Org-Charting the Un-Org-Chart-able, Part 3: My Modest Proposal
Of all the organizational options for PX, what are the best options in my option? Here they are.
Where does PX Fit? Org-Charting the Un-Org-Chart-able, Part 2: Making the Puzzle Pieces Fit
Where organizations put PX will define what PX looks like and what they will spend their time doing. Choose wisely.
Where does PX Fit? Org-Charting the Un-Org-Chart-able, Part 1: System Issues
PX can be marginalized because systems don’t know how to integrate it.
Misunderstanding Math, 2: Idiots, Liars, and Thieves
We need to be smarter, but we also need to hold those who seek to inform us to higher standards.
Blog Entries
Misunderstanding Math, 3: Big Numbers, Big Problems
How people process large numbers affects how they process healthcare outcomes and decisions.
Misunderstanding Math, 1: Percentages and Likelihoods
One big gap between clinicians and patients is how they understand and process math. This failure to communicate can lead to suboptimal outcomes.
Acknowledging the Human in Healthcare
We say we are not perfect and don’t expect perfection, even as we seem to demand it in everything.
Understanding Survey Error, 1: Participation Bias
While it feels like everyone loves us or hates us, that is not the reality of survey data.
The Hospital Experience Economy: Part 2, Inside, Looking Out
Too often hospitals fail to use the right language to connect clinicians and staff with service and experience work.
The Hospital Experience Economy: Part 1, Outside, Looking In
In all the talk about providing unique experiences to patients, one should ask if this is what patients really want.
The Myths We Tell Ourselves
While we judge our patients for their misconceptions, we should spare a moment to evaluate our own misconceptions.
Patient Comments, 2 : Picking the Ripest Patient Comments
Your desire to use patient comments to motivate and inspire starts with picking the right ones.
Two Sides to Every Story: Responding to Doctor Comments
Reviewing physician comments through patient eyes.
Patient Comments, 1 : Importance of Storytelling and Mythology
People often put more stock in patient comments than survey data, but often in the wrong ways.
Attention is currency, 2: Content an Cadence
If you don’t target specific messages in your praise and critique, don’t assume that your team is picking up on the nuance.
Attention is currency, 1: Positivity
Everyone knows that attention is currency, but often people forget that the kind of attention is important.
When the Rational Confronts the Emotional
The key to effective communication is not empathy, but compassion.
Breaking the Vicious Cycle
If you want better communication with your patients, you need to be the change you want.
Search for the Golden Egg, 2: Logic
Connecting patient and employee data contain logical issues the strain the ability to find simple connections.
Search for the Golden Egg, 1: Data
The crossroads between patient and employee satisfaction is a very rocky.
Transactional Surveys Make Bad Things Worse
If transactional relationships are ruining healthcare, then transactional surveying ain’t gonna help.
Real World Implications of Statistical Concepts, 3: Benchmarks
Setting goals against benchmarks is important. Choosing what sort of benchmark is important, but often not fully considered.
How Transactional Relationships in Healthcare are Making Us Miserable
How a change in how we approach enemies, friends and lovers has made healthcare less helpful for patients and satisfying for clinicians.
Real World Implications of Statistical Concepts, 2: Error
Not understanding the omnipresence of statistical error can lead to troubling consequences.
Real World Implications of Statistical Concepts, 1: Significance
On on-going series exploring the intersection of statistics and common understanding to highlight gaps in assumptions and understanding.
My problem with Interval Measures: Mathing the Math, 2
Attempts to create hard measures for soft feelings confuse respondents and deceive themselves.
Staff vs Patients: The Solution
Tips on how to train staff on PX without falling into the same old zero-sum traps.
Threats to Service
Three things that may not seem to challenge the attention that service demands in an organization, but absolutely do.
My Problem with NPS: Mathing the Math, 1
NPS is a popular way to report data and too often it confuses more than it enlightens.
Once More with Feeling, Part 2: All the World is a Stage
Leaders need to understand our patient experience vision if they can support our staff to deliver it.
Once More With Feeling, Part 1: How, not What
Succeeding with service requires a slightly different mindset than succeeding with clinical quality or other elements in hospital operations.
Analytical Mise en Place
A list of valuable things to have at the ready, when you embark on any data exploration.
A Resolution on New Year’s Resolutions
How to be successful in personal or professional behavior-change in the new year, or whenever you decide to make a change.
The Donut, Not the Hole
Creating innovative elements in healthcare demand more tenacity than inspiration.
Do Demographics Matter? It Depends…
Should we care what a patient’s gender, age, or race is? Well, it’s complicated…
The Problem of Terminal Uniqueness
Why healthcare needs to listen, not for the patients, but for themselves.
Why Can’t We be Friends (or at least Frenemies)?
Why Risk and PX mix like oil and water and what we can do about it.
A Tale of Two Hotel Rooms, Part 1
Making people work too hard for something makes a benefit an annoyance.
Motivating the Able not Willing
Managing those who can do the work, but don’t do the work is a special challenge.
Motivating the Willing but not Able
To get people to do what you need them to do, you need to understand why they are not doing what you need them to do.
World’s Worst Decorations, Part 2
More on creating value-adds to data presentations to illuminate and motivate.
World’s Worst Christmas Decorations
Why most dashboards don’t do what you want them to do or get the action you expect.
I Don’t Matter
Living in a world where all experiences are equal, but some are more equal than others.
The Letter Versus the Spirit
Motivating staff means understanding how they may view the work versus how you may view the work.
