Building a "One Team" Culture in Healthcare

<p>one thing we actually just started uh from the patient experience leadership team is you know we were always going out and being present in the hospital that's not new but something that we've started is doing just like we ask our nurses to do purposeful interval rounding we've started doing purposeful rounding as patient experience leaders welcome to the CX matters podcast a production of the American Journal of healthcare strategy with your host Cole lions hello everybody this is Cole from the American Journal of healthc care strategy on the CX matters podcast joined by a special guest with many years of experience in the patient experience space Caitlyn Moser Caitlyn can you please go ahead and introduce yourself into your role yeah hi everyone so uh like Cole mentioned my name is Caitlyn I'm the currently the senior director of patient experience at Medstar Washington Hospital Center in Washington DC um so very fortunate to lead not only patient experience here at the hospital Center but interpreter services and volunteer services so I'm excited to dive in important areas right interpreter Services especially is a major uh area of frustration for many institutions so I think it's good that we're we're speaking with you uh about that uh I wanted to ask how did you find yourself in the patient experience area I know it says on the resume you went to school for kind of uh it says Hotel restaurant institutional management and of course you got your ba from John's Hopkins so why patient experience though I'm sure you would have been very successful managing hotels or doing anything else in the customer experience realm uh but you went into patient experience so why is that yeah so it definitely was like as you already said it was not a linear journey by any means um so right after college uh I thought that like if you would ask me at that time what do you think you'll be doing in five years I was like I'm going to be a general manager of a high-end restaurant um and oh how quickly things change so um just about a year into my restaurant management career um it was a fantastic experience I really enjoyed like the pace of uh restaurants especially the high-end Restaurant Group that I worked for um I just wasn't getting that you know personal satisfaction from the work um I actually I ended up finding out about myself that you know I really wasn't passionate about creating experience es when folks and our guests were expecting it I like to create that kind of surprise and exceptional experience for folks who are not necessarily experiencing it so um you know I was doing a little bit more soul searching if you will and the the guests that I could think of that you know definitely wouldn't be expecting to have an exceptional experience are our patients right and who better to create an amazing experience for are those folks who are not necessarily going through the best time in their lives so I uh was very fortunate to already be connected to a family friend who worked for a hospital in Maryland so I I actually started my health care career in on more of the operation side so I worked um to build up this Hospital's patient and guest services programs then their telecommunications programs and then their Central patient transport programs with a lot of opportunities for project management in between um at the time I was told that patient experience is actually a nursing function yeah and I did not have a nursing background but that's really where I was ex you know I was very interested in so I ended up leaving healthcare for a very brief period of time because I thought well what I really want to do is specifically designated and reserved for those who have had a nursing career um and I didn't see myself going back to school for nursing um so I got I transitioned to Consulting and then I was very fortunate to be contacted um about an experience at Medstar Washington Hospital Center where they were you know open to an opportunity for somebody who did not have a nursing background so that's how I actually got my foot into patient experience was through the great opportunity with MedStar wow I think we're we're glad that you're in the industry because speak you know that that thing that you said at the beginning where having experiences where they are not expecting it that describes Healthcare perfectly right I mean health care or the Red Roof in or something right I mean you know kind of limited there no offense to the Red Roof I've stayed the Red Roof in many times um sure so yeah but still right I mean it's you know you can even have the best hospital you know facility uh with you know the most prestigious doctors and people are still like really you know going to be dragging their feet going in or even things as simple as a colonoscopy because it's something that's not generally comfortable to deal with right so that's a I think I could see why you're in this career right that's a perfect area um it's interesting about that that nursing kind of side of things do you think that is true to an extent or or not really is that a complete misnomer that nursing and is or experience rather is a nursing field yeah so well I I would like to say I 100% understand why someone with a nursing background would be such a strong candidate for a patient experience leader because patient experience really begins and ends with nursing right our nurses have such an important role as it relates to the patient experience so I think someone who has that clinical background so whether it's nursing or clinical background in another element um maybe you were in respiratory therapy or p u physical therapy or something of that nature I I know quite a few patient experienced leaders who have actually had those specific backgrounds um I absolutely see the benefit so I think in my own perspective it's like yeah I do find sometimes that I have to make up for that lack of understanding but um in other ways I see it as a strength because I feel as though it kind of opens it allows us to have um more of that open conversation about what are the possibilities um so I don't know what should happen necessarily at the bedside or what traditionally happens at the bedside in every instance so I think there is that element of um you know could we maybe change it and have you know more improved experience so I think there are strengths to both sides I really do absolutely I've seen that as well that it's challenging when it's you know just a physician experience officer or just a nurse experience officer it's best when there's a team of collaborators who each have their own strength and Specialties and that's when you get that mix of kind of the financial the management the operational and then you also get that clinical background all tied together so I agree it's it's a strength and there's also opportunities for strength on your team and that's kind of the question too for you is how many people are on your team I mean you know this is a large institution a lot of patients that you're you're dealing with yeah so um I mean if we talk about the team that's focused on patient experience we could say thousands are of folks are on our of Associates are on our team because everyone's working towards this one team patient experience but um um you know formally I have 10 folks on our patient experience Team 15 on 15 team members on interpreter services do you when you say that you have thousand on your team throughout the organization everyone's looking at it I have never heard someone say that before uh no offense to my previous patient experience guests of course but that's a unique approach is that something that you've experienced that's unique to to Medstar yeah I would I would say uh it's definitely been unique in my Healthcare experience in in terms of um the excitement and the enthusiasm behind patient experience is not just in nursing it's not just on the opx team um I think our opx team is certainly looked at as the subject matter experts right so we're here to guide the Improvement um and the delivery of the best patient experience but we're not necessarily the folks who are going to get the job done right that's going to be all of us together so we actually have a saying here at Medstar Washington Hospital Center of one team um and it's always written in all caps and it's on just about every email you receive and it's not just a slogan with no meaning it's a slogan that um as soon as you become an associate here at the hospital Center you learn about it you know it you love it and you embrace it how much of your role falls under that employee experience realm because it it would be very important that that one team motto is really felt by everyone in order to have that patient experience succeed so how how much of that is part of your role that's a good question um I I'd like to say I'd like to say 5050 but um I mean our approach is always how can we make the best patient experience by ways of our Associates right so if you know you could argue 5050 I could also argue 100% of the time because we're really focused on you know we know what best practices in B in patient experience how do we make that happen how do we gain that buy in from our Associates and make it a valuable experience for them as well um so you don't achieve one in a silo right where you have to do both yeah right absolutely I struggle sometimes because you come into an organ I mean you know um I think at MedStar the the SE Suite from what I know of everybody the leadership is is really excellent but sometimes you still encounter these scenarios despite having committed leaders at the senior level where employees are just frustrated with the situation they're frustrated whether it's with the pay and the external economy or they're frustrated with operational procedures and things that cannot be fixed right away that's something that I have dealt with I have dealt with uh I've seen it actually firstand where employees are mad about their insurance policy that they were given from work and some changes that have been going on with that and that just creates this frustration how do you or do you have any tips on how to motivate and encourage employees and encourage our team members uh through times of challenge like that yeah I mean I think I could give the the best response from like a leadership perspective for other leaders right so I think the best way to approach it is to just not to sound corny or to use an overly used term but it's that open door policy like how are how are we going out making ourselves available for when folks do need us but then also going out and asking for that specific feedback so um one thing we actually just started uh from the patient experience leadership team is you know we were always going out and being present in the hospital that's not new but something that we've started is doing just like we ask our nurses to do purposeful interval rounding we've started doing purposeful rounding as patient experience leaders so it's not just going to our patients asking about about um you know what do you think about these programs for rolling out in the hospital how's your experience been we're actually talking to our Associates at that time and asking them about the programs we have here at the hospital Center you know how do you feel about your experience is there anything that we could do uh in opx to remove any barriers for you do you have any frustrations at this time that we could help you move past or you know create a solution around so I I think it's that you know dual approach of being available being approachable but then also going out and soliciting for that feedback and I think sure I'm mentioning a specific program we have in the office of patient experience but I think that's something that is an absolute strength and I see is done across many if not all departments here at Medstar Washington um we do a great job of doing Town Halls my voice survey is our biannual survey and the best part about our survey is um our leadership team communicates every time A Change Is made and it's related to a suggestion on my voice they let everyone know this was from our Associates so they do a fantastic job of tying associate feedback to specific outcomes and that's that's really important no it's it's vital because I I worked at Walmart for a while I did um I did oil changes I also did some process Improvement in the oil change department and so one of the issues that we had seen with uh trying to get any processes changed is uh suggestions would go unused for years um or uh there would be a bunch of suggestions and then uh somebody else would claim credit or something you know like that that would just upset people so I love that idea that's a great tip so if an employee suggests something and it gets implemented make sure to let everybody know that this is a suggest that had come through that's smart I like that a lot how do we go about establishing one of these rounding programs for example what are what are some of the first steps to get this started I'm thinking at maybe some of the smaller institutions which haven't had this or maybe they're trying to try something different to boost their metrics what are they supposed to do to get off the ground yeah absolutely we actually launched ours really quickly um because again it wasn't necessarily a like a a new practice it was a practice change like how are we showing up for our Associates and our patients of course too so um I think it was just a matter of laying structure so what we did as a leadership team we came together so we have a team of five um it's our two patient experience Specialists myself our director of patient experience and volunteer services and then our manager of interpreter Services as well so we're actually going out and we said okay what are all the things that we want to check on that are um functional but also like equipment specific so we're checking not only for you know our checking in with our patients and we set a metric of how many patients we should check in um for on each unit how many units we're going to round to each month how we're tracking it just using something as simple as Microsoft forms and we did this all within one meeting and then we said okay what has to be on the unit so we said these the marketing materials that need to be on the unit list those out this is the these are The Interpreter Services equipment that we need to make sure are readily available on the unit we also have to ask Associates do you know where to find your video relay interpretation system um so we very quickly came up with a checklist just in a a 30 minute collaborative meeting and we then we talked about okay what are the questions we want to talk to with our P or speak to with our patient and then what are the questions we want to ask our Associates next thing you know we have a a beautiful checklist we have a Microsoft form and we're ready to go wow that is so cool I love that that's great I like and you use Microsoft forms you said for that that's yeah Microsoft forms it's it's my uh my dream platform I use it for everything that is smart no that's that and I I appreciate you giving us some actionable advice I I have a question um and it's it's about The Interpreter Services as I mentioned we know that there's frustration because it seems like it some institutions have this struggle where it's a kind of a clunky process and it gets lost under the office of the COO or or one of those other offices and it gets kind of you know thrown around it's also very expensive and so it's kind of this challenging area where it's often expensive and then detracting from The Experience why was it placed under your kind of Direction was it for that reason to try to enhance the experience yeah that's a great question I don't know if I can speak to why it was placed with me because it's it was in the infrastructure when I uh was promoted into the role of the senior director if I had to guess the way that I always say I'm very lucky and I I'm I um appreciate that interpreter...