Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

18 PATIENT & CAREGIVER EXPERIENCE CommonSpirit's 'single source of truth' for patient experience By Kelly Gooch F or Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, integrating patient experience into operations centers on collaboration among executives, nursing, physician and operational leaders to align measurement with quality and safety priorities. Data is central to that approach, with the organization operating from what Camille Haycock, senior vice president of patient experience and chief patient experience officer at CommonSpirit, calls a "single source of truth" for patient experience data across the system. "You have to align on the data and ensure everyone is working from the same data points," Ms. Haycock told Becker's. CommonSpirit, a system of more than 2,300 care sites in 24 states, has spent more than six years building and refining this approach at a national scale across multiple care settings, including inpatient, the emergency department, ambulatory surgery, clinics and home health. By doing so, the organization uses insights to create targeted improvement efforts and establish clear performance expectations, with clinics and care settings receiving near real-time feedback to make adjustments. "We receive a large volume of surveys every day, and we start with the data," Ms. Haycock said. "We make sure it is aligned from the national level down to individual clinics, so everyone is working toward the same goals across the entire organization." She noted another key factor in CommonSpirit's approach is embedding patient experience into clinical practice. "is is not new, but doing it at scale and ensuring everyone uses the same tools and integrates it into operations is unique," she said. "It's not an add-on or a nice-to-have — it's fundamental to how we operate. For example, whether it's a nurse at the bedside or a physician seeing patients quickly, we've embedded processes into how that work is done. at has been extremely successful." e approach has driven consistent improvement in patient experience across five types of care sites — inpatient, emergency department, medical practice, home health and virtual care, according to CommonSpirit. e system also outperforms the Press Ganey database on the "Likelihood to Recommend" measure in its inpatient acute and medical practice settings. Additionally, the system reports an aggregate Net Promoter Score of 70.7 across five care sites — inpatient, emergency department, medical practice, home health and ambulatory surgery — with 82% of patients giving the highest possible score on the "Likelihood to Recommend" measure. Because all teams are using the same standardized data, performance is transparent across regions and markets, creating internal competition. "at has been a fun and unexpected outcome, especially in clinics," Ms. Haycock said. She said another important component of CommonSpirit's patient experience approach is accountability, with each care setting having a defined governance structure where leaders help review and inform goals. "en we have accountability models. In inpatient settings, accountability oen sits with nursing leadership. In medical practices, it sits with providers and operational leaders," Ms. Haycock added. "Everyone understands who is accountable for results, and typically it's the operators driving improvement." CommonSpirit also uses patient experience coaches — subject matter experts who partner locally with leaders to standardize practices using playbooks. ey work alongside operational leaders, nurse managers and others to drive more consistent performance across care settings. Ms. Haycock said these experts help standardize the work and identify best practices from top-performing teams. Providers seeking improvement may watch short videos featuring top-performing peers explaining their approaches. ese videos are shared across CommonSpirit and used as learning tools. e system also holds national calls and collaboratives where high-performing leaders teach others. Ms. Haycock said patient experience performance is also reviewed at the highest levels of the organization, including the board, on a regular basis and viewed as being as significant as financial and quality measures. "We've created enthusiasm and momentum by showing incremental improvement. As performance improves, teams gain confidence and energy," she added. "We've seen steady improvement across multiple care settings over time. We maintain consistent goals and gradually increase targets rather than changing priorities frequently." CommonSpirit is also continuing to expand the approach, adding more care settings to its formal goals each year and increasing visibility at the leadership and board levels. Patients are also at the center of the approach. Ms. Haycock said CommonSpirit has a national experience council made up of patients and family members who help inform priorities. "We use journey mapping with patients to identify friction points and determine what should be prioritized. For example, patients identified issues in reception areas, which led to improvements in how staff interact with them," she said. "We've developed resources based on patient feedback, which adds credibility and helps guide improvement efforts." Although CommonSpirit's approach has spurred successes, she acknowledged the challenge early on of managing the volume of data. "We receive a significant number of surveys daily. Making sense of that data, setting priorities and identifying what would drive improvement was initially overwhelming," Ms. Haycock said. "Involving patients has helped us prioritize effectively." Her main takeaway for other organizations seeking patient experience improvement: "Patient experience is not an add-on. It must be embedded into operations. How staff interact with patients defines their experience. Success comes from integrating patient experience into standard work and having operational leaders drive it. It cannot be treated as a separate initiative." n

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