It is unrealistic to expect already overburdened staff to put in more effort to improve the patient experience. Yet, this remains an important and desirable goal for everyone. Dr. Jason Guardino believes that improving experiences can be achieved without adding more work and, in fact, may lead to less work for clinicians and administrators. For example, it only takes a few seconds to treat patients as people.
Swaay.Health had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Jason Guardino, Chief Experience Officer at The Permanente Medical Group, to talk about how they rallied their staff around improving the patient experience and how a small change in the first minute of a patient visit has made an enormous difference for patients and clinicians.
Debunking a Patient Experience Myth
“First, we have to debunk a myth,” stated Guardino. “Creating a great experience does not take very long. In fact, research shows us that it takes about 30 seconds for a physician to lean in, provide compassion, and create a warm, meaningful experience.”
Guardino’s 30 second reference comes from statements made by Dr. Stephen Trzeciak, a critical care doctor at Cooper University Health Care in Camden, NJ in 2018 when he was on the Knowledge at Wharton show on Wharton Business Radio. On that show Trzeciak spoke about a Johns Hopkins study from 1999 that found it took 40 seconds or less for a physician to show enough compassion to reduce a patient’s anxiety.
What Guardino is suggesting is not anything more grandiose than taking a few moments during a visit to look the patient in the eye, smile, and talk to them as a person. Showing compassion and empathy has been proven not only to improve the overall patient experience, it also helps to reduce anxiety, improve medication adherence, and reduce medical errors.
Improving Patient Experience Benefits Physicians Too
Improving the overall patient experience also benefits physicians. That is because the operational and infrastructure changes that accompany patient experience initiatives usually help to streamline the clinical workflows so that physicians can have more time with their patients.
The Permanente Medical Group is taking things one step further and helping all their staff members, not just physicians, benefit from their patient experience initiatives.
“What we are trying to instill in our people at Kaiser Permanente, is our common purpose,” shared Guardino. “Our common purpose is about creating caring moments. We want everybody to understand that it’s not just the people in front of the patient providing care. Everybody is providing care from our security to financial teams, for example, and they all need to understand how their role contributes to the overall patient experience.”
By working together towards this common goal, improvements have been made across the entire organization which have benefitted physicians, all other staff, and patients.
“In 2003 we put a stake in the ground and said ‘we are going to be known as the best and highest quality health care leader in the industry’,” stated Guardino. “Back then, 40% of our people were screend for colon cancer. Fast forward to today – 84% of our people are screened for colon cancer.”
This clinical improvement coincided with an improvement in the overall patient experience and better internal workflows. To build on this success, The Permanente Medical Group is taking additional steps to provide their teams with both the design and analytical tools they need to measure and manage their quality and experience systems.
Watch the interview with Dr. Jason Guardino to learn:
- How to get both clinicians and administrators on board with patient experience improvements
- Why quality management systems are needed
Learn more about The Permanente Medical Group at https://permanente.org/the-permanente-medical-group-inc/
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