7:15am – 8:00am
Conference Registration & Networking Breakfast 

8:00am – 8:15am
Chairperson’s Opening Remarks 

8:15am – 9:00am
Transforming Patient Experience through Health Systems Science
We all recognize the essential nature of patient experience. However, our biases and focus can sometimes mislead us when we view patient experience solely from the perspectives of healthcare professionals and administrators. An individual patient's journey through our hospitals and clinics reflects only moments, with most healthcare experiences occurring outside the system's walls.

To optimize patient experience, we must extend our view beyond our facilities and adopt a holistic perspective that considers healthcare from the patient's vantage point. Health Systems Science (HSS) is a multidisciplinary field that examines how various healthcare system components interact and influence patient outcomes and experiences. It encompasses systems thinking, population health, health policy, health economics, and medical informatics. HSS acknowledges that a health system is not monolithic, especially from the patient's perspective. Each patient journey is unique, requiring the system to respond flexibly and utilize healthcare resources variably.

Let us explore how to optimize processes, communication, and technology to transform patient experiences when interacting with the healthcare system. By embracing Health Systems Science, we can bridge the gap between patient needs and system capabilities, ultimately enhancing the quality and empathy of care provided.

Douglas Slakey, MD, MPH
Professor and Chair, Health Systems Science
Frist College of Medicine, Belmont University
Senior Partner for Healthcare
A.I MIR Consulting 

9:00am – 9:45am
Service Recovery at the Point of Care
Service recovery involves identifying and rectifying instances where patients’ expectations or experiences fall short. Whether it’s a miscommunication, a mistake, or an unmet need, service recovery aims to turn negative experiences into positive ones, ultimately improving patient satisfaction and loyalty. When this service recovery occurs at the point of failure (service) trust is restored between the customer and the point of service, the patient experience is improved, and the customer is retained.

Ann E. Doran, MHSM, MPA, CPHQ, CPHRM
Executive Director, Office of Patient Advocacy
Veterans Health Administration 

9:45am – 10:15am
Networking & Refreshments Break 

10:15am – 11:00am
Empathetic Boundary Setting - The Balance Between Workplace Violence and Patient Experience
Workplace violence is a serious and growing problem in the healthcare sector, affecting the safety and well-being of healthcare workers and patients. Healthcare workers also need to provide good patient experience, which involves empathy, compassion, respect, and communication. How can healthcare workers balance these two needs? This presentation will provide verbiage, guidelines, and strategies to help healthcare workers set empathetic boundaries with patients and others, while maintaining a positive and professional relationship. Setting empathetic boundaries can help healthcare workers enhance their communication, safe care with patients and their visitors, as well as improve the overall patient experience. Importantly, it can also help healthcare workers improve their job satisfaction, performance, and well-being by providing them the support and tools needed to work through these all to common problems. 

Paul S. Kuzmickas, JD
Director | Quality, Safety, and Patient Experience
Cleveland Clinic 

11:00am – 11:45am
Building a Culture Based on Employee Experience
Employees are an organization’s greatest asset.  Investing in their health and wellness is integral to employee engagement and is imperative to a successful customer experience. The organization’s ability to mitigate employee stress and prevent burnout is instrumental in achieving this.  Hear how creating an organizational culture of wellness will positively impact the organization, improve the employee experience, and ultimately increase customer satisfaction.

Key Take-Aways:

- Insights on engagement, wellness and emotional support for employees

- Framework to optimize wellness through effective communication, empathy and compassion

- An understanding of stress indicators and burnout

- Best practices to manage stress and minimize its negative impact

- Fresh perspective on understanding the impacts of stress from multiple levels (the organization, leadership and colleagues and the individual)

David Weisman, Ph.D., CPXP, FPCC
Chief Experience Officer
NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens 

11:45am – 12:30pm

CommonSpirit Health

12:30pm – 1:30pm
Luncheon 

1:30pm – 2:15pm
Patient Advocate: A Critical Role in Patient Experience
This session will help us understand the value of the role of patient advocates in healthcare. Patient advocates remain true to a certain set of principles and a shared value that has been essential to maintaining balance of focus in healthcare organizations. Patient advocates are employed by healthcare organizations with a commitment to ensuring patient voice is heard, yet they also represent the organization in which they are employed, its vision and strategy. The role of the patient advocate is a very unique and special one and can truly make a difference for people throughout the healthcare journey. This session will explore the history of patient advocacy, how it has evolved over time and its relevance to the overall patient experience.

Miguel Arenas, MS, CPXP, BCPA
Senior Director, Patient Relations
Mount Sinai Health System 

2:15pm – 3:15pm
Strengthening Nursing Narration of Care Practices to Improve Patient Experience
Nurses occupy a pivotal role in patient care, addressing not only the physical but also the social, emotional, and spiritual needs of their patients. As the frontline of healthcare, nurses invest more time in direct, hands-on patient interactions than any other healthcare professionals. Understanding their impact on patient outcomes and satisfaction is crucial. This session will explore essential principles and strategies for effective patient communication, aiming to enhance care delivery. Attendees will gain insights into techniques that minimize patient anxiety, provide robust education, and ensure excellent care coordination, thereby fostering a holistic and supportive care environment.

Ashleigh Kamencik-Wright
Program Director
Houston Methodist 

Terrell Williams
Project Specialist
Houston Methodist 

Natalie Zuniga-Georgy
Senior Consultant
Houston Methodist 

3:15pm – 3:45pm
Networking & Refreshments Break 

3:45pm – 4:15pm
How to Improve Patient Experience in the Emergency Department
More than 50 percent of patients are admitted through the emergency department, which means hospitals that focus on fostering positive patient experiences in the ED can expect to see a positive ripple effect throughout the rest of the hospital. Creating a high-performing emergency department that prioritizes patient satisfaction can be a huge advantage to your hospital. This session will explore the benefits of high-performing emergency departments, what happens when emergency departments poorly perform, and ways you can provide an exceptional emergency department experience at your hospital. 

Lisa Giocondi, M.B.A., RN, FACHE
Operations Manager | Department of Critical Care | Department of Emergency Medicine & Observation Medicine | Mayo Clinic Arizona

4:15pm – 5:00pm
Rapidly Improving Patient Experience Outcomes Across a Large, Geographically Dispersed Medical Practice Group
The Patient Experience team at a large, geographically dispersed medical practice group sought to reimagine a centralized support model that would reengage clinical division leadership and rapidly improve patient experience outcomes following environmental interruptions such as pandemic remote work models, employee turnover, and a new system EMR roll out. The reimagining of our support model included shifting from command & control to servant leadership models, offering clinical divisions a menu of impactful, convenient, and measurable improvement initiatives to select from, cross training all patient experience team members on each initiative, and magnifying both process and outcome measurement tracking. Likelihood to recommend practice improved from the 35th to the 70th percentile and complaint rates fell by 20% over a 12-month period. We will discuss sustainment planning including expanding the menu of improvement initiatives, customizing initiatives by clinical division performance levels, and recruiting and training local patient experience champions.

Learning Objective 1: Apply a patient experience improvement model, featuring a menu of impactful, convenient initiatives, to support large geographically dispersed medical practice groups

Learning Objective 2: Evaluate the impact on likelihood to recommend practice and complaint rates when reimagining a centralized patient experience support model in a large medical practice group

Learning Objective 3: Discuss the seven impactful, convenient patient experience improvement initiatives that will support multiple ambulatory clinics

Jessica Bradley
Emory Healthcare 

Shantae Prince, MBA, APM, LSSBB
Patient Experience Consultant
Emory Healthcare 

5:15pm
End of Day One

7:15am – 8:00am
Networking Breakfast 

8:00am – 8:15am
Chairperson’s Recap

8:15am – 9:00am
The Relationship Between Patient Experience and Patient Satisfaction
Patient experience and patient satisfaction are healthcare terms that are too often used interchangeably. Although they appear to be synonymous – a patient’s hospital experience should be satisfactory, one might assume – they are in fact separate terms that have entirely different meanings to healthcare professionals.

The difference between patient experience and patient satisfaction has implications for quality improvement in healthcare. Thus, it is vital that healthcare professionals understand the distinction between the two concepts and apply them appropriately to their work. Doing so will drive patient-centered care and make those pursuits more precise. To what extent does patient experience account for variation in patient satisfaction with a healthcare system? Which aspects of patient experience relate most strongly to satisfaction with services? This session will explore the concept of patient experience and its relationship with patient satisfaction.

Mandy Riemer, MSW
Manager, Patient Experience
The Office of Patient Experience
Children’s Mercy Kansas City 

9:00am – 9:45am
TBD 

9:45am – 10:15am
Networking & Refreshments Break 

10:15am – 11:00am

Liz Menschner, DNP, MAS, RN, NEA-BC
Executive Director
Pennsylvania Organization of Nurse Leaders 

11:00am – 11:45am

Megan Hughes
Volunteer Services Manager
Children’s Wisconsin 

11:45am – 12:30pm
TBD

12:30pm
Conference Concludes

12:45pm – 2:45pm

Workshop: The Impact of Candidate Experience on Patient Experience

Talent shortages are the norm, competition is intense, and top talent – from nurses to physicians to support staff – all have choices. Your candidate experience can be the key differentiation between talent choosing you or another hospital. Delivering a positive candidate experience not only helps you attract the best talent, but it is those same individuals who will ultimately deliver the best care and service to your patients. Your HCAHPS scores are a direct reflection of the people you have hired to care for your community, so your hiring experience presents a massive opportunity that can be felt all the way to your bottom line.

This session will walk you through the impact, both positive and negative, that candidate