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Hospital Medicine - the way it should be

Sound Physicians Patient Experience Program

In this white paper:

• Sound Physicians’ partnership with leaders in the patient experience of care space• The PX tools, education and resources Sound Physicans provides its hospitalists • The impressive results Sound Physicians has seen from its PX program at partner hospitals

Sound Physicians is a leading hospitalist organization focused on driving improvements in the quality, satisfaction and efficiency of inpatient health care delivery. As the practice of choice for more than 100 hospitals across the country, Sound Physicians has an entire department dedicated to improving the patient experience of care. Our team is led by Mark Rudolph, MD, SFHM, VP of Patient Experience and Physician Development for Sound Physicians, as well as Chair of the Society of Hospital Medicine’s Patient Experience Group. He guides a group of chief hospitalists, hospitalist nurses and administrative leaders in efforts to enhance the quality and satisfaction of patient care.

Our Patient Experience of Care PhilosophyOur approach is based on the study and implementation of best practices from thought leaders in this space, including the Beryl Institute, Studer Group, Press Ganey, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. We regularly partner with such organizations to host webcasts that discuss cutting-edge innovations in the patient experience of care. Past collaborations have included Quint Studer; Press Ganey; Dr. Atul Gawande, best-selling author of The Checklist Manifesto; and Dr. Thomas Lee, former CEO of Partners HealthCare, current CMO of Press Ganey, and author of Chaos and Organization in Medicine. We have developed a library of tools, education and resources, as well as a strategic training and leadership program that engages our physicians in offering the best patient care.

PX Tools, Education & Resources

• AIDET® Key Communications Modules: All of our providers are required to complete a suite of 5 web-based learning modules that address the Studer Group’s AIDET Key Communications. These modules contain videos produced by Sound Physicians that model all of the communication behaviors expected of our providers. Using these resources as a model including customization by our PX team, we have developed a hospitalist-specific set of communication interventions that ties back to the Studer Group’s AIDET fundamentals of communication, in recognition of their wide-spread use and effectiveness.

• Patient Communication Tools: One intervention we feel strongly about is that patients deserve materials that name their provider and explain the hospitalist role. It helps the providers to facilitate proper introductions and explanations and also is a mechanism for showing accountability to patients.

• PX Monthly Focus: To keep the conversation innovative and relevant, we have a PX Focus each month that is shared not just with providers, but with every colleague in the organization. Topics have included: how to create connection with patients; reducing the trauma of hospitalization; and the importance of referring to hospital staff by name. These topics are also used by our PX Champions as a discussion point at monthly hospitalist team meetings.

• Manage Up Education: In an effort to take our efforts beyond the walls of our team, we’ve developed “Manage Up” education for nursing staff which specifically addresses scenarios where nursing staff have opportunities to refine questions that may arise regarding hospitalists. This education is typically completed at nursing department staff meetings with our PX Champions and hospitalist RNs.

Engaging Physicians as PX Leaders

• PX Champion: We appoint a PX Champion at every site, who acts as the team’s liaison to both our partner hospitals and our organization in our mutual efforts to improve the patient experience. PX Champions adhere to an explicit set of roles and responsibilities, one of which is to address the PX Monthly focus with their colleagues at the monthly hospitalist team meetings.

• Observation and Coaching: We believe that observed patient encounters serve to raise provider awareness regarding both opportunities for improvement and also acknowledge communication strengths. We use our AIDET Key Communications Tools to outline expectations for providers. We work with the resources at each site individually to determine who can best serve as an observer and coach. We also provide training via a web-based training module for individuals that are appointed to serve as observers.

• Meaningful Data: Through our observation and coaching, we are able to provide meaningful data to our hospitalists about how they can improve. For hospitalists, HCAHPS scores are difficult to attribute to individual providers, so we focus on offering personalized feedback -- and we’ve measured how doing so remarkably transforms performance across hospitals of all sizes and regions.

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ContactEmail: partnership@soundphysicians.comWeb: www.soundphysicians.comPhone: (253) 682-6052

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