Shannon Lutz, BAAS, ARRT(R), Associate Vice President, Ambulatory Quality & Safety, Memorial Hermann Health System
Anne-Claire France, PhD, CPHQ, MBB, FACHE, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Quality & Safety, Memorial Hermann Health System

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Cultural Transformation

In 2009, Memorial Hermann had a High Reliability program in place that had earned awards for improving quality and safety. However, the system did not have reliability processes in place for its ambulatory services, which accounted for 48% of its business. To address this, a pilot filter committee of executives, imaging modalities leaders and radiologists were trained to classify events using a revised version of the HPI Safety Event Classification System and Event Categories Taxonomy, and to correct and prevent errors using common cause analysis and cause mapping. The outcomes of this successful pilot became part of Memorial Hermann’s monthly System-Wide Risk and Patient Safety Report, and by 2017, the medical group’s 90+ physician clinics had implemented their own filter committee. Attend this session to learn more about this program, its outcomes, and how Memorial Hermann’s 250+ ambulatory sites now address corrective actions to prevent the recurrence of errors. 
​

Tracela Vaden, MD, CPE, FACP, Medical Director of Patient Safety, Atrium (Carolinas Healthcare)
Constance Rego, MSN, RN, Patient Safety Coordinator/Quality, Atrium (Carolinas Healthcare)

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Learning & Collaboration

Atrium did not have a standardized peer review program among physicians in the outpatient setting. Numerous conversations with physicians outlined the need for cultural change and transparency to improve the quality of care. As a result, a confidential, protected peer review process was developed to assess current practices and safety events and provide feedback among physicians and other providers. Learn how Atrium modeled the program implemented in the acute care setting to engage specialty medical directors, legal advisors, credentialing departments, patient safety and quality leaders to develop this peer review process across the medical group. 

Rosalind Washington, PhD, MBA, MHSM, RRT, CHES, Director of Patient and Family Experience, Texas Health Physicians Group
Lynn Myers, MD, Senior Vice President/Chief Medical & Quality Officer, Texas Health Physicians Group

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Learning & Collaboration

While Texas Health Physicians Group, of Texas Health Resources, transitioned to a clinically integrated network, it was imperative to create a just culture and a reliable culture among physicians to improve the quality of care and prevent safety issues. Covering 6,429 square miles across 11 counties, the medical group consists of more than 600 providers, 2,000 support staff and a laboratory. Nearly all physicians were trained within the first year of implementation. Learn how operational leaders agreed to provide education and training to support staff and physicians to help execute High Reliability principles.

Sandy Rush, MA, BSN, CHE, Senior Director of Patient Experience, Dignity Health
Page West, RN, MPA/MHA, HACP, Senior Vice President/System CNE, Dignity Health

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

Creating a positive patient experience is foundational to Dignity Health’s mission and the basis of its brand. Higher patient experience ratings result in better clinical outcomes. In this session, leaders from Dignity Health will discuss how the organization implemented a fun competition called The Amazing Race to increase nurse-patient communication and staff responsiveness across 90 nursing units, and how the excitement and engagement the competition generated among the staff led to improvements across the organization. Attendees will learn the strategies and tactics implemented in this program and be able to take this fun approach back to their organization.

Dennis Jolley, MPH, MEd, Vice President/Chief Strategy, Communication & Marketing Officer, Gillette Children’s Specialty Hospital

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Medical Practice & Consumerism

Every day, your patients are defining your brand via word of mouth and social media. In this session, you’ll learn how the patient voice is collected, analyzed and ultimately can be leveraged for performance improvement initiatives. This session offers applicable and cost-effective strategies to dramatically improve an organization’s ability to manage consumer expectations and strengthen system brand and market position.

Wendy Watson, MPH, Vice President of Regional Ambulatory Care & Clinical Services, Kaiser Permanente
Chantelle Schenning, MHA, Executive Consultant, Regional Ambulatory Care & Clinical Services, Kaiser Permanente
Kari Engholm, MHA, Sr. Director Dental, Dental Care Delivery- Interim, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the NW
Cyrus Lee, DMD, Dental Director, Care Delivery, Permanente Dental Associates
Adam Morris, MBA, Senior Administrator, Kaiser Permanente

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Across the Continuum

Kaiser Permanente is the largest nonprofit integrated health care delivery system in the United States. Like all national health care organizations, it is challenged with balancing the ability to provide high-quality, affordable care in a timely fashion. In this session, learn how the organization developed a customized Kaizen rapid improvement strategy to better meet patients’ care needs. Presenters will provide an overview of the strategy, which is highly engaging and patient-centric.

Christina Dempsey, MSN, CNOR, CENP, FAAN, President, Clinical Excellence Solutions and Chief Nursing Officer, Press Ganey

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Nursing Leadership to Advance Compassionate Connected Care

Health care is evolving.  The journey to transformation will be one led by the people who care for the patient across the health care continuum – and nurses are at the forefront of this transformational journey.  At this pivotal time in health care, nursing shortages and experience gaps could slow the much needed momentum toward better quality, safety, and experience of care.  Fostering resilience and understanding key drivers of burnout across the lifecycle of the nursing workforce is critically important.  This session will focus on those key drivers and strategies to drive improvement. Christy will present cross-domain analytics relative to nursing resilience and burnout, identify key drivers of nursing turnover across the continuum and discuss strategies to foster resilience and reduce burnout. 

Vicki LoPachin, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Mount Sinai Health System
Erica Rubinstein, MS, LCSW, CPXP, Vice President, Service Excellence & Patient Experience, Mount Sinai Health System

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Physician Leadership Across the Continuum of Care

At Mount Sinai Health System (MSHS), the patient experience had historically been led through a separate department and was seen as peripheral to safety and quality. In this session, attendees will hear how a physician leader incorporated patient experience into the safety and quality strategy for the health system, and how, in partnership with Press Ganey Strategic Consulting experts, MSHS is working to further enhance physician engagement through a robust strategy to connect patient experience with safety and quality.

​Carole Hackett, RN, BSN, EdM, CPLP, Senior Vice President, Human Resources/CHRO, Houston Methodist
Thomas Vernon, RN, BSN, EdM, CPLP, System Director, Talent Management, Houston Methodist

Focus Area: Workforce & Engagement: Aligning to the Mission

​Houston Methodist, an organization recognized as a best place to provide care, understands what is needed to differentiate itself: a culture that strives to create the best possible experience for employees and patients. After years of top-decile employee engagement scores, Houston Methodist experienced a significant drop in 2015. Due to unprecedented growth and expansion, culture had become diluted. Attend this session to learn how Houston Methodist realigned its workforce to its most valuable asset: its culture.

Craig Clapper, PE, CMQ/OE, Partner, Strategic Consulting, Press Ganey
Steve Kreiser, MBA, Partner, Strategic Consulting, Press Ganey

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Cultural Transformation

Data reveals that emphasizing safety over competing goals has a measurable impact on an organization’s overall performance. In this session, safety experts Craig Clapper and Steve Kreiser will describe how a safety culture prevents system-caused human error and results in an 80% reduction in serious preventable patient harm and workforce injury. They will further explain how a focus on safety culture results in high reliability, which is the best producer of clinical quality, patient experience, workforce and medical staff engagement, and efficiency.

Renee Ghaheri, Injury Prevention Specialist, Sharp HealthCare
Jay Santiago, Injury Prevention Specialist, Sharp HealthCare

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Learning & Collaboration

Join Sharp HealthCare’s injury prevention specialists as they share how their organization took steps to highlight the importance of workplace safety and strengthen injury prevention efforts. In this session, you will learn how Sharp HealthCare integrated High Reliability Organization (HRO) concepts into an exciting new role to reduce workplace injuries, increase employee awareness and identify opportunities for systemwide safety initiatives. Specialists will share how the organization incorporated HPI Safety Event Classification® taxonomy into tools for identifying high-risk behaviors and developing personalized action plans for long-term injury prevention. Learn how the injury investigation process can be a valuable tool for pinpointing program gaps, identifying injury trends and promoting a sustainable safety culture.

​Karen Birmingham, PharmD, Patient Safety Officer, Kaiser Permanente

Focus Area: ​Safety & High Reliability: Learning & Collaboration

​In 2013–2014, Kaiser Permanente of Washington (KPWA) provided initial reliability training to 4,500 care delivery staff—training that is now required for all new employees, managers and practitioners on clinical teams. Although serious safety events decreased significantly within the first few years of training, High Reliability principles had not become habits. Attend this session to learn how KPWA conducted refresher reliability training for care delivery teams, developed training for nonclinical teams and addressed barriers to habit formation.

Anastasia Luby, MS, Director, Patient Experience, Catholic Medical Center
Karen McLaughlin, Patient Experience Specialist, Catholic Medical Center

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

Join this session to hear about the tools and tactics that were required to implement a volunteer patient-family advisor rounding program. The session will focus on the unique benefits of a rounding strategy executed by patient volunteers to improve the patient experience and increase collaboration. Presenters will discuss the benefits of a relationship-centered approach, including improved nursing staff efficiency, faster service recovery and issue resolution, and more focused patient experience at the forefront of care. Attendees will leave with specific skills to support a volunteer patient-family advisor rounding program, set goals and ensure accountability.

CJ Merrill, MSN, CPXP, CPHQ, Patient Experience Officer, Mission Health System
Lauren Valencic, MPH, Ambulatory Experience Coordinator, Mission Health System

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Medical Practice & Consumerism

This session’s presenter will provide a comprehensive overview of Mission Health System’s culture change initiative focused on improving the patient experience in an ambulatory practice setting. Attendees will learn the key elements required to develop and implement this model, evaluation methods and how to foster sustainability and engagement to promote successful adoption. Use of the model to set expectations, establish consistency, maintain accountability and improve performance by disseminating leading practices to all ambulatory clinics will also be covered.

Tracy Laibson, CPXP, Director, Patient Experience, Allina Health
Sara Criger, MHA, Senior Vice President, North Region and President, Mercy Hospital, Allina Health

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Across the Continuum

Attend this session to learn how Allina Health successfully implemented a large-scale service training and sustainability program across the system’s hospitals. Attendees will get an overview of Allina Health’s keys to success and hear how the organization overcame barriers to using a train-the-trainer model. Tips for obtaining buy-in and leadership approval for a service training program in a highly matrixed organizational structure as well as approaches and resources used for post-training sustainability will also be shared.

Lucy Leclerc, PhD, RN-BC, Director of Professional Practice, WellStar Cobb Hospital
Yona Roberts, PharmD, BCPS, Clinical Pharmacy Manager, WellStar Cobb Hospital
Cami Mitelman, MS, CPXP, Manager of Patient Experience, WellStar Cobb Hospital

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Nursing Leadership to Advance Compassionate Connected Care

Care providers are often frustrated with survey results indicating that patients deny having been told about the side effects of new medications. Despite the best intentions and efforts of the health care team, there are multiple variables that interfere with a patient’s ability to absorb information during an acute care stay, including language, literacy and sensory impairment, as well as information overload. Learn how this facility addressed communication disparities through the innovative use of emojis to create a memory for the patient and family that lasts well beyond discharge from the acute care setting.

Richard R. Orlandi, MD, Chief Medical Officer for Ambulatory Health, University of Utah Health

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Physician Leadership Across the Continuum of Care

This presentation will focus on actionable strategies for leading physicians with impact and empathy, with the goal of performing at the highest level of patient experience. The presenter will share the experiences of everyone from the line physicians to the system leader of this 1.6 million outpatient academic enterprise to describe how engaging physicians’ hearts, minds and natural drive to succeed transformed a 1,000+ physician group. Attendees will learn practical approaches to presenting data, building and leveraging authentic patient-centered teams and using positive recognition; gain unique insight from the nation’s leader in transparency five years into the effort; and hear personal experiences that illuminate these strategies.

Elena Memoracion, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, Senior Administrative Director, North Shore University Hospital
Kerri Anne Scanlon, MSN, RN, Deputy Chief Nurse Executive/ Chief Nursing Officer, Northwell Health

Focus Area: Workforce & Engagement: Aligning to the Mission

Employee engagement and satisfaction are related to business outcomes at a magnitude that is important to many organizations. Organizations that prioritize engagement outperform the competition. Highly engaged employees can drive a variety of positive organizational outcomes. North Shore University Hospital’s “Three Cos” model leverages innovative and proven strategies to engage the workforce, boost accountability and create high-performing teams. Attend this session to learn how the organization used robust data on critical workforce-related themes to transform its culture and empower its workforce to achieve organizational goals across the board.

Kristopher Morgan, PhD, Director, Workforce Analytics, Press Ganey

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Reporting & Insights

This popular session reviews the basic statistics used in reporting patient experience data. Each type of statistic that Press Ganey uses in its reporting will be explained, and straightforward examples and stories will be provided to make statistical concepts memorable and easy to understand. After attending the session, novice audience members will feel comfortable reading and understanding statistics and experienced data crunchers will be better equipped to explain statistics to colleagues.

Deirdre Mylod, PhD, Executive Director of Institute for Innovation; SVP Research & Analytics, Press Ganey

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Reporting & Insights

Without process, structure and action, the true value of data cannot be realized. In this session, Deirdre demystifies the challenge of using integrated data to build a structured plan that drives individual accountability and ownership. Deirdre will present a framework that assesses an organization’s cultural, managerial and tactical performance through an integrated measure set to understand both your effectiveness and performance gaps. You will learn how to apply this model within your own organization to meaningfully interpret your data, align your teams and focus your action planning.

Colonel Theresa Clark, Chief, Trusted Care Execution, Air Force Medical Operations Agency (AFMOA), United States Air Force Medical Service

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Cultural Transformation

In 2014, the Air Force Medical Service (AFMS) began its High Reliability journey already struggling with change fatigue from serving 2.6 million beneficiaries across 76 overseas treatment facilities. Through leadership engagement, human capital programs and interactive training programs, the AFMS overcame the challenges of dual missions (readiness and safety), complex rank structures and frequent turnover. During this panel discussion and Q&A, attendees will learn how to rally a geographically dispersed health care system around a common vision, drive actionable behavior changes and reinforce those changes through engaging tools such as mobile apps, board games, video contests and badge cards.

Julie Wright, MSNEd, RN, System Director, Clinical Risk Management, Office of Patient Experience, Intermountain Healthcare
Bonnie Jacklin, MSN, RN, Senior Nurse Executive Director, Office of Patient Experience, Intermountain Healthcare

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Learning & Collaboration

Implementing High Reliability principles can be challenging in the outpatient clinic setting. This session’s presenters will share how Intermountain Healthcare identified and addressed the unique needs of Intermountain Medical Group’s 185 clinics during the implementation and rollout of its Continuous Improvement Zero Harm Initiative, and how Intermountain is continuing to move high reliability forward in the medical group by addressing unique outpatient needs. Sustainment efforts include an electronic huddle board used in daily tiered huddles, alignment of hospital and medical group safety teams to look at care across the continuum, and development of an Ambulatory Patient Harm Index to proactively reduce preventable harm in the outpatient setting.

Leslie Meyer, MA, LPCC, Director of ProMedica Experience, ProMedica Health System
Nicole Justus, MSN, RN, Risk Management Specialist, ProMedica Health System

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

As health care and its complexity evolve, the definition of patient experience evolves as well. Attend this session to learn how ProMedica Health improved the care experience for its patients and its employees. Speakers will discuss how they conceptualized and integrated safety, quality, service and employee engagement by establishing data target meetings across the system to set expectations and overcome barriers. They also will provide strategies for measuring, reporting, educating and connecting with patients as well as creating an organizational vision with one cohesive strategy.

Susannah Rose, PhD, Scientific Director of Research, Office of Patient Experience, Cleveland Clinic

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

Technology is rapidly changing the patient experience landscape, with a direct impact on things like patient-provider relationships, satisfaction and loyalty, as well as overall care quality. The Cleveland Clinic’s patient-centered research program has extensive experience providing high-quality virtualized care—having completed 20,000+ virtual consults in 2017, The Clinic has more than 1,300 virtual providers in 100 clinical specialties. This session will address critical strategies for improving patients’ experiences with virtual healthcare, including data-driven approaches that can be applied across other online environments.

Joyce Phillip, MA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, Chief Human Resources Officer, University of Maryland Faculty Physicians, Inc. (FPI)
David Schwartz, MD, Director, Clinical Affairs Special Programs, Office of the Dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Rukiya Wongus, MHA, PMP, CMPE, Associate Director, Patient Experience Improvement, University of Maryland Faculty Physicians, Inc. (FPI)

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Medical Practice & Consumerism

In this session, leaders from University of Maryland Faculty Physicians, Inc., will describe how the organization’s Program for Excellence in Patient-Centered Communication (PEP) improved its safety, experience and patient outcomes. The presenters will highlight best practices and learning methods for gaining physician engagement and organizational buy-in for a relationship-centered communication program. They will also explain the sequential steps for building a strong program, discuss the pitfalls to avoid in program development, and provide an overview of skills-based training and techniques for engaging leadership.

Lisa Allen, PhD, Chief Patient Experience Officer, Johns Hopkins Health System
Chevaunne Edwards, MPH, CPHQ, LSSGB, Lead Patient Experience Analyst, Johns Hopkins Health System

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Across the Continuum

This presentation will highlight Johns Hopkins Health System’s two years of experience in implementing the Bivarus text-based survey in a variety of settings. The presenters will discuss implementation strategies including sites chosen, questions and buy-in across blood draw labs, radiology, outpatient specialty clinics, radiation oncology and pediatrics. In addition, they will speak about the differences in response rates, demographics and quality of the comments, and will offer suggestions on where best to implement as well as pitfalls to avoid. Attendees will leave with knowledge of the pros and cons of implementing this type of survey approach, and specific tactics they can take back to their organization.

Kelly Johnson, RN, PhD, NEA-BC, Chief Nursing Officer, Stanford Children’s Health
Christine Cunningham, CPXP, MBA, Administrative Director, Office of Patient Experience, Stanford Children’s Health

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Nursing Leadership to Advance Compassionate Connected Care

A collaborative approach to nurse leader rounding, grounded in Lean strategies, has been successful at Stanford Children’s Health. The Nurse Leadership team meets monthly with the Office of Patient Experience to discuss this evidence-based best practice. Learn how having nurse leaders check on every patient every day decreased complaints, improved the facility’s likelihood to recommend rating and improved recognition. Incorporating tools such as a visibility board, monthly coaching and reporting within existing Lean management systems has resulted in scores that are, on average, 12 points higher than before program implementation.

Dhaval Desai, MD, Director of Hospital Medicine, Emory Healthcare / Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital
Jennifer Barlow, MPH, RN, Nursing Unit Director, Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Physician Leadership Across the Continuum of Care

Much of the inpatient experience depends on the hospitalist. In the current health care marketplace, care delivered by hospitalists impacts key hospital metrics, including HCAHPS scores, length of stay and early discharges. Nevertheless, hospitalists are expected to manage a high volume of patients each day. This session’s presenters will discuss the hospital medicine program at Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital (part of Emory Healthcare), including the initial challenges regarding recruitment, retention and quality performance during the first two years, and the ultimate transformation of hospitalist culture and performance. The session will specifically address how one multidisciplinary care model between physicians, nurses and other integral partners of the health care team improved the overall patient experience.

David Marra, MEd, Management Development Coordinator, UF Health Shands Hospital
Danita Gainer, HR Development Coordinator, UF Health
Wendy Kissinger, HRD Coordinator, UF Health

Focus Area: Workforce & Engagement: Aligning to the Mission

Engaging leaders at all levels of the organization is essential to achieving engagement at the front line. In this session, presenters from UF Health Shands Hospital will take attendees through a process for assisting leaders of low-scoring work units. Along the way, the presenters will describe how utilizing meaningful data as part of a collaborative partnership, segmenting the workforce into tiers, and leveraging Action Planning Readiness scores provided insight into where leaders should devote time and resources for targeted improvement efforts.

Andrea Barberi, MBA/MHA, Senior Clinical Data Analyst, Atrium Health
Jennifer Cluppert, Patient Safety Coordinator II, Atrium Health

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Cultural Transformation

In 2016, 81% of Atrium’s 3,299 reported safety events were precursor events. Of these events, 76% resulted in no harm or no detectable harm, so the organization struggled with how to elevate the importance of these safety risks so that they would not become safety events in the future. The solution was to convene a team with diverse skills in ambulatory patient care, root cause analysis, data analytics, and risk and project management to develop a process that would prioritize safety issues and risks in the ambulatory setting. This session’s presenters will describe how Atrium applied Safety Event Classification® principles used in the inpatient setting to develop an Ambulatory Cause Analysis Program and Ambulatory Risk Prioritization Matrix that address safety risks affecting the organization’s bottom line and patient satisfaction.

​Brenda Perkins-Meingast, RN,BHScN, MEd, Director, Practice Based Education / Lead Caring Safety Education, University Health Network
Ivanka Hanley, MEd, Senior Education Specialist, University Health Network

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Learning & Collaboration

A series of seven mandatory two-hour reliability modules was developed and delivered to more than 700 leaders at University Health Network (UHN) over seven months. UHN realized leaders were having a hard time translating reliability theory into practice. As a result, a dynamic live simulation was developed to portray a clinician in crisis based on an actual event occurring at UHN. Learn how UHN used this live simulation, a transformative pedagogical approach, to allow practitioners to engage in challenging clinical interactions through the lens of their own health care professional role without pretense.

James Merlino, MD, Chief Transformation Officer, Press Ganey

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

In order to deliver sustainable change, organizations must convene leadership from the highly interdependent areas of safety, quality experience of care and workforce engagement under one aligned vision with shared enterprise-wide goals. In this session, Dr. Merlino will present a transformational framework for accomplishing this task, including critical assessment questions and specific action steps for achieving measurable change. He will also present how to structure leadership and governance to support integrated planning and execution. You will learn how to translate this approach into your own organization with specific planning and tactical guidance.

James Demopoulos, MHA, Senior Vice President/COO, Lehigh Valley Physician Group

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Medical Practice & Consumerism

Historically, “access” was narrowly defined as the timeliness in obtaining an appointment with a provider within the group practice setting. Today it also means access to human capital and information at every touch point of a patient’s interaction with a health care provider and their care/support teams. This interaction must be bidirectional and relentless. In this session, attendees will learn about the Lehigh Valley Physician Group’s journey to take the voice of the patient, an access solutions bundle developed over the past three decades, and Lean/Six Sigma–applied science to solve for one of the largest challenges and opportunities within health care.

Patricia Regan, MHA, Director of Patient Access, Gracie Square Hospital
Shuntelle Stephen, MPH, Patient Experience Coordinator, Gracie Square Hospital

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Across the Continuum

This session’s presenters will demonstrate how a small team of eager, dedicated employees helped positively affect the patient experience in an institution going through various transformations. Gracie Square Hospital, a small psychiatric inpatient facility, is on a mission to provide the highest-quality, state-of-the-art mental health and chemical dependency treatment in a warm, healing environment. Speakers will lay the groundwork and provide tools for how to run community meetings, increase survey participation rates and create a sustainable cultural change that focuses on the patient’s needs first.

Ellen Wilson, MS, Executive Director,Therapy Services/Interim Chief Patient Experience Officer, UCLA Health
Wendy Tucker, MPH, Inpatient Integrative Medicine Coordinator, UCLA Health

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Nursing Leadership to Advance Compassionate Connected Care

Faced with a limited choice of techniques that patient care staff could utilize to address symptom relief and a reliance on physician orders to administer these options, UCLA Health partnered with the Urban Zen Foundation to develop a new model for symptom management that is focused on non-pharmacologic approaches. In this session, attendees will hear details about the model and UCLA Health’s comprehensive training program that teaches patient care staff to address patient needs on the spot, before reaching for medication, with techniques such as in-bed yoga, reiki, aromatherapy, contemplative care and self-care that are customized to each patient's needs.

Ghazala Sharieff, MD, MBA, Corporate Vice President, Chief Experience Officer, Scripps Health

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Physician Leadership Across the Continuum of Care

Hospitalists see the majority of patients across the Scripps Health network and were one of the key target areas for improving HCAHPS scores. Feedback is important for change management, so the organization engaged each site’s medical director by supplying monthly aggregate group hospitalist scores as well as providing resources such as group and staff training sessions and 1:1 bedside MD to MD coaching. In this session, attendees will learn how strong partnerships between the chief executive, medical directors and the lead patient experience physician led to better physician understanding of the value of a continued focus on patient experience insights and resulted in dramatically improved outcomes in the hospitalist groups with engaged medical directors.

Mickey Foster, MA, President, Moses Cone Hospital; Senior Vice President, The Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital
Joseph Stern, MD, FACS, Neurosurgeon, Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates; Member, Cone Health Medical Staff, The Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital
Jonathan Berry, MD, Interventional Cardiologist, Cone Health Medical Group HeartCare; Member, Cone Health Medical Staff, The Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital

Focus Area: Workforce & Engagement: Aligning to the Mission

This session will detail the strategies that were implemented at a health system’s flagship hospital to move physician engagement from the bottom quartile to the top decile over a five-year period. Physician engagement is paramount as health systems seek to transition from volume- to value-based models of care while improving quality, patient experience and efficiency. Recognizing the importance of engagement is only the first step in a health system’s journey to achieving a strong partnership with physicians. Attendees will receive actionable takeaways from an organization that has boosted physician engagement from below the national average to the 91st percentile.

Debbie Hatmaker, PhD, RN, FAAN, Chief Nursing Officer, ANA Enterprise

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Nursing Leadership to Advance Compassionate Connected Care

The ANA Enterprise leverages the combined strength of the American Nurses Association, the American Nurses Credentialing Center and the American Nurses Foundation to empower nurses everywhere. Representing the interests of the nation’s 4 million registered nurses, the ANA Enterprise promotes the health, safety and wellness of nurses in all practice environments and provides the resources, information and network necessary for nurses to excel. The ANA Enterprise drives excellence in practice and ensures that policy leaders, industry influencers and employers around the country recognize nurses’ voice and vision. This session will review the programmatic work of the ANA Enterprise and how its initiatives and campaigns align with key nursing priorities. The presenter will also describe the Magnet Recognition Program® and Pathway to Excellence® standards, framework and global reach.

Katie Foley, Senior Specialist, Patient Safety, Cancer Treatment Centers of America®, Comprehensive Care and Research Center, Chicago
Jacklynn Lesniak, MS, BSN, RN, NEA-BC, Senior Vice President of Patient Care Services and Chief Nursing Officer, Cancer Treatment Centers of America®, Comprehensive Care and Research Center, Chicago

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Cultural Transformation

High Reliability Units (HRUs) are proving to be instrumental in motivating the health care workforce to commit to Zero Harm and integrate High Reliability principles among distinct teams, departments and service lines. Through an HRU road map, planning sheet and additional tools, attendees will learn how to instill these six High Reliability standards in each unit: 1) Establish safety event communications and safety behaviors; 2) Develop a chain of command; 3) Provide education and onboarding; 4) Implement hand hygiene observation; 5) Build sensitivity to operations; and 6) Recruit and train safety champions.

Mary Herold, RN, BSN, CNML, System Clinical Safety Ops Manager, MedStar Health
Travis Mitchell, MSHA, System Clinical Safety Program Ops Manager, MedStar Health

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Learning & Collaboration

Integrating a consistent approach to mitigating potential serious safety events is complicated in any hospital. However, the barriers are amplified in a complex care delivery system such as MedStar Health, with 10 hospitals, 280+ ambulatory treatment sites, 200,000+ inpatient admissions, 4 million outpatient visits per year and 30,000+ caregivers and staff to keep engaged. Attend this session to learn how MedStar uses evidence-based case studies to address potential adverse events, coordinate response across the system, care for caregivers and integrate HPI’s Safety Event Classification and Serious Safety Event rate into its system safety strategy.

Tom Tull, MBA, FACHE, VP, Chief Experience Officer, Ballad Health

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

This session’s presenter will discuss approaches to steadily improving performance in HCAHPS domains, with a focus on targeted actions that are connected yet tailored to the practice setting. Attendees will learn how a systematic approach enabled Ballad Health to gain momentum in all service areas with foundational activities that propel success through practical actions and strategies. Lean and PDCA methods of engagement that can be implemented at all levels of an organization will also be covered.

Chrissy Daniels, MS,  Partner, Strategic Consulting, Press Ganey

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Medical Practice & Consumerism

In an era of consumerism, medical practice emerges as the focal point of consumer choice. The strongest choice that consumers have today is selecting their physician, and to attract patients, providers must undertake strategies to understand their preferences and design systems and experiences to meet their needs. In this session, Chrissy will examine the intersections of physician resilience, clinical operations and consumer choice to understand how these dimensions affect market share. Further, she will discuss how creating highly reliable experiences and operations both increases physician resilience and consumer engagement. Finally, Chrissy will present strategies for you to assess your consumer strategy today and how to address the gaps.

Jane Arnold, MSA, MA, OTR/L, Vice President, Operations and Homecare, UnityPoint Health at Home
Vikki Bridgford, RN, Clinical Manager, UnityPoint Health at Home
Carla Miles, Patient Experience Director, UnityPoint Health-Sioux City

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Across the Continuum

This session will highlight how UnityPoint at Home identified an opportunity to help caregivers understand their relationship and communication with their patients, and how the results directly correlate to the patients’ perception of their care. Attendees will learn how leaders can begin to understand the importance of coaching at the elbow to ensure that caregivers understand how to deploy educational techniques, the importance of consistency of scripting, and the power of data transparency. Recognizing the ownership role and relationship the case manager plays in patient care will be discussed, along with effective improvement processes the entire care team can use to improve patients’ perception of care. The presenter will also explain how to identify and verify accurate provider data being sent to Press Ganey.

Michelle Little, BSN, RN, CMSRN, Clinical Coordinator, Cardiac Renal Unit, Saratoga Hospital
Diane Gaylord, BSN, RN, CCM, Manager of Care Management, Saratoga Hospital

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Nursing Leadership to Advance Compassionate Connected Care

Providing excellent patient care means helping patients stay healthy—even those with chronic conditions. To avoid readmissions, this community hospital developed and implemented a program to engage heart failure patients and their caregivers in care planning and transition across the continuum of care. Nurses in both care management and the inpatient cardiac unit worked with the hospital’s established Cardiac Collaborative to bring consensus to this multidisciplinary service-line work group. This session’s presenters will describe how patient and caregiver engagement at Saratoga Hospital starts on day one of hospitalization with the introduction of the Heart Failure Toolkit and Zone Tool, which maps out learning objectives for the patient and caregiver(s) to accomplish each day and includes teach-back methods for learner engagement, and how follow-up calls from registered nurses four weeks after initial discharge fosters strong relationships with patients and caregivers.

Charles Bissell, MD, Section Chief, Department of Surgery, Carilion Clinic
Becky Fritz, MPH, Director of Department of Surgery, Carilion Clinic

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Physician Leadership Across the Continuum of Care

Engaging providers in patient experience initiatives can be challenging but changing provider behaviors to include patients in decision making produces many benefits. Learn how a physician leader and his administrative team influenced provider and patient perceptions using their own case studies, language and results to move the needle on Press Ganey results and patient loyalty.

Ingrid Cheslek, MPA, BSN, RN, NEA-BC, CCOO/CNO, Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital
Karen Powell, PHR, SHRM-CP, Vice President of Human Resources, Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital
Emily Babson, RACR, Employment Specialist, Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital

Focus Area: Workforce & Engagement: Aligning to the Mission

Mary Free Bed was in critical condition in 2011 with an outdated building, cramped semiprivate rooms, noisy hallways and a low patient census. It also faced a merger bid by a large health care system, poor staff morale and struggling financial performance. Survival is a powerful motivator. Mary Free Bed began construction on a new inpatient rehabilitation hospital, remodeled and expanded its outpatient services and created a rehabilitation network. But most importantly, Mary Free Bed committed to building a high-performing workforce, introducing unique recruitment and retention tactics—and they worked! Its employee engagement score rocketed from the 59th percentile in 2015 to the 93rd percentile the following year, and remains in the upper decile. Attend this session to learn how Mary Free Bed achieved these impressive outcomes.

Amy McLaughlin, MPH, Director, Nursing Service Line, Lahey Hospital & Medical Center
Aubrey Podell, MHA, Manager, Nursing Operations, Lahey Hospital & Medical Center

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Across the Continuum

At a time when Lahey Hospital & Medical Center is emerging from a major financial turnaround and on the precipice of a multisystem merger, the organization has expanded its focus by pursuing a more balanced approach to operational and clinical excellence to prioritize its high-value improvement initiatives. The convergence of workforce engagement, quality and safety, and patient experience requires a level of analytical sophistication to identify the key drivers of care and their influence on operational performance. In this session, attendees will learn how Lahey Hospital & Medical Center used cross-domain analysis to make purposeful, strategic trade-offs that allow it to maximize its resources in order to deliver the care and value that its patients and families deserve.

Nell Buhlman, MBA, Chief Strategy Officer, Press Ganey
Iyue Sung, PhD, Vice President, Enterprise Analytics, Press Ganey

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Reporting & Insights

Data is a form of currency that supports health care executives’ decisions and the ability of their organization to deliver safe and reliable care while remaining financially healthy. Although the data span a range of factors—including patient experience, workforce engagement, clinical quality and finances—it can be difficult to quantify the interdependencies of these factors and provide insight for performance management. Nevertheless, the evidence is clear that relationships we intuitively understand are also empirically true. In this session, Nell and Iyue will describe an analytic framework for understanding the convergence of these factors, prioritizing decisions and ultimately leading to the organizational transformation that is required to improve health care delivery.

Jennifer Sipert, CPHQ, RDMS, RVT, Patient Safety Manager, Providence Health & Services, Providence St. Peter Hospital
Gerda Stafford, BSN, MHA, CPHQ, Service Area Director of Quality, Providence Health & Services, Providence St. Peter Hospital

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Cultural Transformation

Providence needed a common communication tool to emphasize that safety behaviors are universal. Initially, resistance was high beyond executive leadership because the workforce feared reporting safety events, especially if it meant initiating a regional daily safety huddle among two acute care hospitals and the medical group. Attend this session to learn how Providence combined a daily report shared with the entire workforce with the use of templates, algorithms and evidence during daily safety huddles to engage leadership, improve safety culture and ultimately decrease its Serious Safety Event Rate® (SSER®).

Jack Soterakis, MD, FACP, FACG, Vice President, Performance Improvement & Physician Clinical Services, Catholic Health Services of Long Island
Lesli Giglio, RN, MPA, CPHRM, CPPS, System Vice President, Risk Management, Patient Safety Chief Privacy Officer, Catholic Health Services of Long Island
Eileen M. Esposito, DNP, MPA, RN-BC, CPHQ, Vice President, Ambulatory Clinical Practice, Catholic Health Services of Long Island

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Learning & Collaboration

Shortly after embarking on its High Reliability journey in 2016, Catholic Health Services of Long Island (CHSLI) realized its physician enterprise, comprising 72 ambulatory practices staffed by more than 150 multispecialty physicians, would also benefit from reliability training and error prevention tools. So the organization launched an initiative to hold all physicians accountable to this culture change and become a High Reliability Organization (HRO). In this session, CHSLI leaders will describe how the organization deployed the entire program to the ambulatory setting through daily safety huddles, safety event team meetings, learning boards and other tactics, as well as discuss the process of recruiting more than 70 staff, including physicians, to volunteer to be safety coaches.

Mindy Spigel, RN, MSN, CPXP, CPN, Director of Patient Experience, CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

Engaging staff through the Press Ganey Compassionate Connected Care^TM model increases levels of quality and safety of services within the complexity of a health care organization. In this session, presenters will discuss how they established front-line teams to lead patient experience, quality and safety initiatives for each hospital in the CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System. Attendees will learn how to create a culture of ownership far beyond accountability, and how to implement a program that unites the chief quality officer and the director of patient experience to bring about improvements across the board.

Paul Sternberg Jr., MD, Chief Patient Experience Officer, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Brian Carlson, Senior Director of Patient Experience, Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

When disruptive operational change is unavoidable, health care organizations must partner with patients to successfully adapt and implement processes that will continue to improve the quality and delivery of care. Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Dr. Paul Sternberg Jr., Chief Patient Experience Officer, and Brian Carlson, Senior Director of Patient Experience, will share how their organization harnessed the patient voice to measure the impact of a challenging, systemwide EHR implementation and inform executive-level decisions to continue to deliver patient-centered care. Their session will illustrate the imperative of supporting transparency between patients and providers, so that organizations can navigate changes with their patients, not around them.

Megan Sullivan, MSBA, Director of Quality Improvement, UC Health UC Physicians
Lori Mackey, MBA, Chief Operating Officer, UC Health UC Physicians

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Medical Practice & Consumerism

Measurably improving patient experience requires physician engagement and buy-in. In this session, attendees will hear how the physician division of UC Health increased the number of its survey responses to increase n, organized its internal process, recognized top performers and created a culture of transparency that propelled the organization from the bottom quartile to above-average performance. Attendees will also hear how the program positively affected patient experience, physician engagement and transparency.

Brian Brasser, MSA, BSN, RN, FACHE, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer,  Spectrum Health Delivery System
Joshua Kooistra, DO, Vice President and Department Chief Acute Health and Continuing Care, Spectrum Health 

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Across the Continuum

Attend this session to hear about Spectrum Health’s transformational effort to move all inpatient and outpatient facility data to one electronic health record using Epic. This movement was grounded in culture change, single-owner decision making and patient-centric care coordination across the health system’s 12 hospitals and nearly 200 care sites. Attendees will gain insight on how to improve their organization’s self-awareness, sharpen trust and collaboration skills, and inspire others throughout the organization to become better leaders, collaborators and care providers.

Marie Elivert, RN, BSN, MPA, Chief Experience Officer, NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens
Christopher Roker, MBA, Chief Executive Officer, NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens
Vincent Rizzo, MD, MBA, FACP, CPE, Associate Director, Department of Medicine Associate Director, Internal Medicine Residency Program, Queens Hospital Center

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Nursing Leadership to Advance Compassionate Connected Care

The patient experience journey for NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens began with leadership defining the patient and family experience and including it as one of the organization’s top five strategic priorities. Attend this session to learn how to elevate the importance of patient and family experience across all care settings at your organization. Presenters will describe the various aspects of this process, including generating, collecting and sharing ideas and proven best practices, as well as engaging a broad range of voices and views of patient and family. Attendees will realize the impact that the entire health care team can have on the patient and family experience as a result.

Richard Nordahl, MBA-HCA, Chief Executive Officer, Sanford Sheldon Medical Center
Sara Zolle, MD, Lead Physician, Sanford Sheldon Medical Center

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Physician Leadership Across the Continuum of Care

As health care evolves, providers can no longer expect consumers to meet their organization’s scheduling needs. Instead, organizations must meet consumers’ needs using up-to-date access approaches. Attend this presentation to learn how Sanford Sheldon Medical Center implemented a 24-7 ED strategy to enhance service excellence and improve its performance in multiple domains. Presenters will describe how the strategy both reduced ED visits to lower the overall cost of care, and met patients where they needed to be met with primary care hours when they needed them.

Joseph Moscola, PA, MBA, Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer, Northwell Health

Focus Area: Workforce & Engagement: Aligning to the Mission

The healthcare workforce is changing at an exponential rate; thus introducing new, and highly complex challenges for today’s employer. Yet, with every challenge comes opportunity and executives responsible for building, managing and sustaining a successful human capital strategy we must identify ways to capitalize on those opportunities. During this session, Joe will address the key drivers shaping the future of the healthcare workforce and share examples of Northwell Health’s approach to workforce readiness. Through his presentation, he will discuss the importance of utilizing data and analytics to inform an HR strategy that enables large healthcare organizations to leverage technology, shift resources and support the evolving demands of multi-generational employees. 

Gia DeMichele, MA, Program Manager, Culture of Safety, Dignity Health
Karen Byrnes, MSN, RN, CPXP, Director of Patient Experience, Dignity Health

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Cultural Transformation

Even though Dignity’s Chandler Regional and Mercy Gilbert Medical Centers had excellent quality outcomes and good patient experience scores, preventable errors still occurred, resulting in serious harm to patients. The CEO recognized the disparity and initiated a High Reliability journey across the organization. Leaders soon recognized the error prevention tools that were developed could prevent any error within any aspect of care. They began discussing safety and patient experience issues at daily reliability huddles, and consistently tracking HCAHPS and Serious Safety Event Rate® data. Attend this session to learn how Dignity overcame the silos that were preventing the organization from approaching safety and patient experience in integrated ways.

Brian Kaminski, DO, CPPS, Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety, ProMedica Health System

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Learning & Collaboration

Physicians are key to establishing and sustaining a culture of safety. Like many health systems, ProMedica employs many types of physicians: affiliated, contracted, academic and private group physicians. In order to engage such a variety of physicians with unique needs, ProMedica demonstrated the value of a High Reliability program for each individual, regardless of their employment status. Learn how ProMedica designed an educational curriculum and peer-to-peer training that is geared specifically for physicians and is offered on a flexible implementation schedule that is considerate of their busy work lives.

Wanda Sharp, Director of Patient Relations and Patient Experience, Queen’s Medical Center
Jason Chang, MBA, Executive Vice President / Chief Operating Officer, Queen’s Medical Center

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

Like many organizations, Queen’s Medical Center was struggling with its efforts to improve the patient experience, burdened by the weight of endless strategies, tactics and initiatives that had little desired, long-lasting effect. This session’s presenters will discuss how their partnership with Press Ganey helped create a powerful organizational narrative, establish leader support and change the organization’s approach to data usage. Attendees will leave with insights on how the key components of the Press Ganey perspective can be used to develop a communication strategy that transforms behavioral standards and engages staff.

Chaise Camp, MBA, MA, MS, MA, Executive Director, Patient Experience, Nebraska Medicine
Jeremy Carr, MBA, Patient Experience Advisor, Nebraska Medicine

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Medical Practice & Consumerism

By January 2017, Nebraska Medicine had experienced multiple years of stagnant or declining patient experience scores across the system. Simultaneously, staff engagement was declining, which made sustainable improvement increasingly difficult. In response, the system implemented a radical change in its approach to one based on innovative techniques and key social-scientific principles. This session will focus on how Nebraska Medicine used Press Ganey insights to understand the drivers of patients’ overall impressions of their care and the innovative process it deployed to better understand the dynamic relationships between patients and staff that was shaping the experience of both. The speaker will describe how the system engaged staff in solving their own challenges and managed the disruptions of change, as well as share examples and outcomes from the medical clinic.

Kellie Olmstead, MBA, Vice President, Continuous Improvement, Nemours Children's Health System
Bill Britton, Operational Vice President, Finance, Delaware Valley, Nemours Children's Health System

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Across the Continuum

In 2016, Nemours embarked on a systemwide improvement effort focused on the revenue cycle—specifically, patient responsibility (PR). With today’s evolving health care environment, patients are becoming more financially responsible for their care and are often unaware of their significant financial obligations beyond monthly premiums. This session provides an overview of the continuous improvement (CI ) approach Nemours has taken with PR, balancing ROI with patient-centeredness. Presenters will discuss successes, failures and learnings of the PR work, which impacts six states, more than three dozen sites and more than 800 revenue cycle associates.

Ryan Garvey, MBA, BSN, RN, Director, Women’s and Infants’ Services, Sibley Memorial Hospital
Patricia Haresign, MS, BSN, RN-BC, Patient Experience Nurse Specialist, Sibley Memorial Hospital

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Nursing Leadership to Advance Compassionate Connected Care

​Every woman who chooses to deliver her baby at Sibley Memorial Hospital should have an excellent experience. Yet, a complex array of factors play into how a labor and delivery patient perceives her care experience. The clinical team is caring for both mother and baby at a critical point in their lives; therefore, ensuring collaboration across teams and hardwiring sustainable improvement strategies across units are key factors for success. Attend this session to learn how Sibley Memorial Hospital focused on leveraging the relationship between patient experience, safety and communication skills to improve patients’ care experience in labor and delivery.

Thomas H. Lee, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Press Ganey

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Physician Leadership Across the Continuum of Care

Health care’s burnout crisis is a complex problem that requires multi-dimensional solutions -- but also offers multi-dimensional opportunities to tackle safety, quality and patient experience.  Dr. Lee will discuss interventions based upon a framework that breaks down the causes of physician burnout and thoughts on building resilience, integrating new insights on the importance of grit – i.e., passion and perseverance for the goal of meeting patients’ needs and reducing their suffering.  He will describe how effectiveness can be enhanced at the individual, team, and overall organization levels if providers define integrated goals, are consumed by the desire to improve, and display resilience and flexibility.

Lois Bentler-Lampe, MS, RN-BC, CNO-VP, Clinical Operations, OSF Home Care & Post-Acute Services, OSF Healthcare- Home Care
AJ Querciagrossa, RPh, MS, MBA, President, Home Care & Post-Acute Services, OSF Healthcare- Home Care

Focus Area: Workforce & Engagement: Aligning to the Mission

Organizational culture can have a powerful impact on workforce commitment. OSF Home Care & Post-Acute Services has been on a five-year journey to improve workforce commitment with its employees, known as Mission Partners. In 2016 OSF Home Care & Post-Acute Services reached the 95th percentile in engagement, and in 2017 it reached the 96th percentile. This session will focus on how leadership—with a commitment to establishing a foundation of engaged Mission Partners—approached the task of improving the organization’s overall culture in order to improve in other key areas, such as patient experience and quality.

Ashley Holmstrom, DNP, MSN, RN, NE-BC, Vice President, Clinical Nursing, Metropolitan Methodist Hospital
Ulondia Lee, DNPc, MSN, CENP, RN,Chief Nursing Officer, Metropolitan Methodist Hospital
Denzil Ross, MBA, MHA, Chief Operating Officer, Metropolitan Methodist Hospital

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

A culture that lacks engagement, has weak accountability and has no communication plan between physicians and front-line staff results in a culture of mistrust and an overall poor reputation. In this session, leaders from Metropolitan Methodist Hospital will describe how they created transformational change by focusing on patient- and family-centered care with their WOW program to foster an inviting and engaged workforce. Attendees will learn how they can implement their own program to go above and beyond patient and family expectations, beginning with the small details that lead to major changes in patient experience improvement.

Ann Marie Stein, RDN, MBA, CPHQ, Executive Director, Organizational Quality and Patient Safety, Valley View Hospital
Nancy Billington, RN, MSN-L, Administrative Director of Patient Care Services and Perioperative, Valley View Hospital

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Cultural Transformation

In 2016, Valley View Hospital engaged its workforce to be intricately involved in strengthening its organizational culture by establishing a Safety Coaching Program. Safety coaches were tasked with sharing insights on what was working, what wasn’t working and what was needed to sustain a culture of safety and reliability. However, by 2017, participation in the program started to suffer, and so did the hospital’s safety culture. Attend this session to learn how Valley View Hospital reinvigorated the program, recruited 49 safety coaches to participate from only 56 total departments/clinics and inspired the entire workforce to connect both professionally and personally.

Nikki Polis, PhD, RN, Chief Nurse Executive, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare
Mackenzie Henry, JD, MSHA, Director of Patient Care Operations, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Learning & Collaboration

Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare implemented High Reliability error prevention training across six hospitals, more than 50 provider‐based clinics and multiple ambulatory settings. With the challenges of ensuring a comprehensive curriculum while being realistic about the scheduling and training of 12,000 associates and 2,500 medical staff, leaders developed an innovative strategy to train all associates and providers through a blend of technology and traditional classroom training. Attend this session to learn about their innovative approach, the challenges of completing a large‐scale implementation, holding groups accountable to deadlines and the need for constant reinforcement upon completion.

Suzanne Smith, MS, Senior Director of Patient Experience, Mercy Health System

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

Most of what clinical care providers do to care for patients is evidence-based clinical practice. Yet, the consistent use of evidence-based leadership practices is less common. In this session, attendees will learn three evidence-supported leader tactics targeting the overall patient experience. Specifically, the presenter will discuss rounding for outcomes, discharge phone calls and bedside shift reporting and how these strategies can improve engagement and collaboration at your organization.

Geralyn Karpiscak, MSN, RN, NEA-BC, Director of Patient Relations and Customer Service, Penn Medicine Princeton Health
James Demetriades, MBA, Vice President of Operations, Penn Medicine Princeton Health

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Medical Practice & Consumerism

In May 2012, Penn Medicine Princeton Health replaced its acute care hospital with a state-of-the-art facility less than five miles away. The move resulted in an immediate, statistically significant increase in overall inpatient experience scores; however, outpatient experience scores were slow to improve. This session’s presenters will share how they utilized Press Ganey insights to identify priorities and develop and implement a multiyear strategic plan to increase patient experience in the outpatient setting. The speakers will also describe how the plan identified and addressed four key areas of opportunity for the organization: leadership accountability, way finding, staff interactions and hiring strategies.

Dawn Moeller, MHA, BSN, RN, CEN, Clinical Manager of Emergency and Trauma Services, Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital
Yvonne Miller, BSN, RN, NE-BC, Clinical Manager of Oncology/Surgical Services, Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Across the Continuum

Wait times in the ER are a critical component of the patient experience and, depending on the length, can hinder or progress a patient’s hospital stay. In this session, Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital will describe how the Press Ganey patient experience survey questions were used to engage its nursing departments to focus on the timely movement of new admissions from the emergency department to the inpatient nursing unit. Attendees will learn about this evidence-based strategy and how to assess readiness to manage the hands of time using face-to-face bedside handovers partnered with a timely admission process.

​Press Ganey Advisors

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Reporting & Insights

This session is for everyone, from novice data users to those with years of experience. Press Ganey advisors will lead small groups in an overview of Press Ganey reporting, with some groups focusing on how to quickly dive into and analyze patient experience data. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and get additional guidance from their group leader.

Deborah Fulbrook, EdM, MHS, BSN, RN, NEA-BC, Chief Nursing Officer, Inova Fair Oaks Hospital
Tammy Razmic, MHA, Chief Operating/Financial Officer, Inova Fair Oaks Hospital

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Nursing Leadership to Advance Compassionate Connected Care

Learn how Inova Fair Oaks Hospital bridged the teamwork gap between nursing and support services to better meet patient needs. Starting with a strong commitment to maintaining a culture that inspires all staff and ensures staff engagement in the patient experience, the organization developed a leadership model to foster alignment between the two teams. This session will focus on how this model improved collaboration and resulted in improved purposeful rounding on patients. Strategies for measurement, accountability, real-time problem solving and sustainment will be shared, along with results from the ongoing program.

Joan Zoltanski, MD, MBA, Chief Experience Officer, University Hospitals of Cleveland
Jennifer Lorenz, MSN, MHA, RN, Director of Patient Experience & Quality Analytics, University Hospitals of Cleveland

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Physician Leadership Across the Continuum of Care

University Hospitals of Cleveland recently went through a transformation change to position the organization for the 21st century. Leaders sought a strategy that would make greatness consistent and failings a zero event. To begin, they looked inward to their founding principles to create a sustainable strategy that resonated with employees. Then they focused on equity of advanced medicine and equity of experience excellence, for every patient, every time. Attend this session to learn how the organization operationalized new initiatives, overcame cultural barriers and sustained improvement in patient experience across the organization. 

Joseph Cabral, MS, Chief Human Resources Officer & President of Workforce Solutions, Press Ganey
Mary Jo Assi, DNP, RN, FNP-BC, NEA-BC, FANN, SVP, Clinical Excellence Solutions & Associate Chief Nursing Officer, Press Ganey
Linda McHugh, MT, MBA, Chief Human Resources Officer, Cleveland Clinic
K. Kelly Hancock, DNP, RN, NE-BC, Executive Chief Nursing Officer, CCHS and Chief Nursing Officer, Main Campus
Cleveland Clinic

Focus Area: Workforce & Engagement: Aligning to the Mission

To deliver on your mission, you need every employee to understand and deliver on the patient promise of safe, high-quality, patient-centered care every day. In this session, Joe will discuss how to attract and align talent around your mission, vision and priorities. He will present how to identify common threads that touch the critical areas of patient experience, clinical quality and safety to support shared improvement goals. Further, Joe and Mary Jo will explore how HR leadership can partner with key executives, such as nursing leadership, to support alignment in each of these key areas across your organization.

​Thomas "Dusty" Deringer, PhD, MS, Vice President, Patient Experience, Compass One Healthcare

Focus Area: ​Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

Health care organizations that truly create an exceptional patient experience deliver safe, high-quality care in an environment of compassion, empathy and respect. Organizations that limit their focus to only clinical care miss a critical opportunity to leverage the wider team--namely, support services--to ensure that patients and their families experience compassionate connected care at each point in the delivery system.

This session's presenter will discuss the research, strategies and tactics behind a multiyear partnership between Compass One Healthcare and Press Ganey that was designed to understand and enhance the value that support services workers in areas such as environmental services, food and nutrition services, and patient transport bring to the caregiver team. Strategies, tactics and lessons learned will be shared with attendees to provide key educational opportunities for any organization committed to improving the patient experience.

Press Ganey Advisors

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Reporting & Insights

This session is for everyone, from novice data users to those with years of experience. Press Ganey advisors will lead small groups in an overview of Press Ganey reporting, with some groups focusing on how to quickly dive into and analyze engagement data. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and get additional guidance from their group leader.

Nancy Curdy, MSN, MS, RN, CPHQ, CPPS, Director of Patient Safety, Piedmont Healthcare
Michael Todd, RTT, Quality and Safety Specialist, Piedmont Healthcare 
Deborah Armstrong, FACHE, Chief Executive Officer, Piedmont Henry Hospital

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Cultural Transformation

In January 2017, Piedmont had 167 safety coaches across a six-hospital system. By March 2018, it had a total of 435 safety coaches. Not only did the number of safety coaches increase by 62%, but based on the results of their Safety Coach Effectiveness scores, those safety coaches are now more engaged and effective at changing the cultures of their hospitals. Learn how Piedmont refreshed its program for creating robust staff-level safety champions in clinical and nonclinical departments, resulting in an improvement in culture and a decrease in serious safety events across the system.

Press Ganey Advisors

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Nursing Leadership to Advance Compassionate Connected Care

This cooperative learning session is designed for attendees to connect with and learn from peers on topics related to the Magnet Recognition Program®. Interactive roundtable discussions will be led by Press Ganey Magnet experts on a series of themes related to current standards and updates to Magnet requirements for nurse satisfaction, patient experience and nurse sensitive clinical indicators. This session is appropriate for attendees that are considering a Magnet journey, already on the journey or those that have already achieved Magnet status and are looking to sustain performance and recertify.

Steve Mrozowski, MHA, NRP, CPPS, Director of Patient Safety, Penn State Health, Hershey Medical Center

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Learning & Collaboration

Penn State Health, Hershey Medical Center did not have a standardized approach in place for root cause analysis (RCA). The output of an RCA depended on the location/unit on which the event occurred, or it varied based on the RCA methodology that was used and on how the RCA facilitator was trained. Lack of a centralized repository for RCA documentation and inconsistent senior executive engagement had led to action item density and failure to track action item timeliness and completion status. Attend this session to learn a framework for identifying, training and maintaining competencies for RCA executive owners, as well as the first steps that are required for establishing an RCA program.

Margaret Muir, MSN, RN, CNML, Strategic Services Associate, Patient Experience, Duke Regional Hospital
Victoria Orto, DNP, BC, Chief Nursing & Patient Care Services Officer, Duke Regional Hospital
Heather Mitchell, MHA, BSN, RN, NC-BC, Interim Manager Patient Placement and Interpreter Services, Duke Regional Hospital

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

Today’s complex and overwhelming amount of patient feedback has created the need for a manageable strategy that allows leaders to group their organization’s problems and create actionable plans. In this session, Duke Regional Hospital leaders will discuss how to use Press Ganey categorized comments in the Improvement Portal and InfoEdge to hear the customer’s voice and develop a specific improvement process around this important information. Attendees will learn how to track negative patient comments into an Excel format of the specific patient areas of concern and create a plan to track the number of concerns in each category every month, and subsequently every quarter.

David Perez, MBA, RRT, Director of Service Excellence, Baylor Scott & White Health
Radha Mahale, MD, Physician and Medical Director, Baylor Scott & White Health

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Medical Practice & Consumerism

Historically, Baylor Scott & White’s Pflugerville Clinic had low employee engagement and low patient engagement scores. The team went through multiple programs, including communication coaching and process improvement initiatives, to improve those scores, but to short-term gain. After investigating the issue, the leadership team realized that the low level of teamwork had a negative impact on not only the patient experience, but also the overall clinic culture. In this session, attendees will learn how an experimental program that integrated organization development theory and Lean methodology enabled the Pflugerville Clinic to build and improve teamwork, which led to improved employee engagement and increased patient engagement scores.

Rebecca Guess, MS, Practice Optimization Quality Analyst- Team Lead, Baptist Health Medical Group 

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Across the Continuum

In an era of reporting only opportunities for improvement, the Baptist Health Medical Group (BHMG) decided to report opportunities for recognition. In 2017, BHMG rolled out the Rewards and Recognition program within the Medical Group. The Rewards and Recognition program consists of three awards, each given to medical practices that achieve a top-box score improvement on the question “Recommend Provider Office.” The Discover Award recognizes practices with 100% top-box scores on the question, with at least 25 surveys in any one month during the quarterly review period. The Improve Award recognizes practices that achieve a 5% improvement in top-box score on the question, with at least 25 surveys every month from the previous quarter to the current quarter. And the Sustain Award recognizes practices with at least a 95% top-box score for the question, and at least 25 surveys in every month during the quarterly review period.

In the 12 months from program inception to program implementation, the Medical Group raised its ranking from the 49th percentile to the 65th percentile. Throughout the process, staff were celebrated and able to share best practices, all while feeling a sense of shared accountability for system improvement and overall Press Ganey scores.

In this session, attendees will learn how BHMG leaders implemented the program, as well as how they engaged staff in participating in it and acknowledged their successes.

Elizabeth Tedesco, DNP, RN, CEN, PHRN, Unit Director, UPMC Passavant
Jonathan Landis, MD, FACEP, Chairman, Emergency Services, UPMC Passavant

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Nursing Leadership to Advance Compassionate Connected Care

The unpredictable nature of the emergency department setting means visits can surge during peak times and bottlenecks can occur, increasing wait times and negatively impacting the patient experience. Excessive wait time can be linked to patients leaving without being seen (LWBS), creating a safety and quality issue for those in need of treatment. Learn how this facility leveraged Lean methodologies and involved nurses, physicians and leadership to develop and implement a multifaceted strategy that reduced LWBS rates and improved patient experience scores.

Marianne Sumego, MD, Director,Shared Medical Appointments/Staff Physician, Cleveland Clinic

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Physician Leadership Across the Continuum of Care

Driven by the need to reevaluate care delivery and provide access in a cost-effective, high-quality way, Cleveland Clinic leadership investigated the potential of the shared medical appointment (SMA), a 90-minute appointment during which multiple patients with a common condition are seen at the same time. This session will provide an overview of their journey, including how they created awareness of the program and developed an SMA best practice model and associated workflows, while also overcoming hurdles and driving change and adoption in the organization. Attendees will see data on quality, access and patient satisfaction gained from feedback and experience, and will leave with the knowledge necessary to transform this little-known concept into a new standard of care.

Tammy Wright, MSHR, Senior Director, Voice of the Customer, Novant Health
Greg Johns, MBA, Advisor, Workforce Solutions, Press Ganey

Focus Area: Workforce & Engagement: Aligning to the Mission

After seeing a decline in engagement, Novant Health recognized the need to prioritize engagement and support team members by assessing key elements of daily work, including resilience, perceptions of safety, nursing quality and engagement. Attend this session to learn how Novant Health used an integrated approach to monitoring aspects of the health care work environment to provide a platform for measuring the impact that its caregivers have on the overall experience of care, promoting team member engagement and increasing leadership development.

Hazel Pennington, RN, Manager, Corporate Quality, Vidant Health
Teresa Anderson, PhD, RN, NE-BC, Vice President of Quality, Vidant Health

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Cultural Transformation

In FY2015, 20% of Vidant Health’s serious safety events were contingent on the inability to recognize clinical deterioration resulting in delayed treatment of care. After a succession of unrecognizable cases, the opportunity for a systemwide solution was apparent. A multidisciplinary team comprising the assistant medical informatics officer (AMIO), an executive sponsor, hospitalists and nurse managers, among many others, convinced executives through a detailed plan to recognize patient deterioration at the vulnerability stage instead of at the catastrophic stage. Learn how this cross-functional team developed the plan, which includes real-time coaching, daily feedback and monthly executive summaries.

Terrie Van Buren, RN, BSN, MBA, CPPS, Vice President, Patient Safety Officer, CHS PSO
Giselle Krieger, RN, BSN, MS (PSL), CPHRM, CPPS, Sr. Director Patient Safety, CHS PSO

Focus Area: Safety & High Reliability: Learning & Collaboration

The Community Health Systems PSO noticed that its serious safety event rate (SSER) reductions had reached a plateau. To understand why, the PSO analyzed the frequency and severity of serious safety events and conducted a common cause analysis to identify individual and system failures. The PSO began to align tactics to improve the patient experience with error prevention behaviors such as leader rounding, hourly rounding, bedside shift reports and nurse leader rounding. It also simplified policies, checklists and protocols relative to surgical counts, as well as fall and suicide risk prevention. Attend this session to gain insights and specific action items you can use to reduce your organization’s SSER.

Catherine Sokoloff, MPH, Senior Manager, Patient Experience, NYU Langone Hospital—Brooklyn
Jenny Rozenberg, MHA, Patient Experience Improvement Specialist, NYU Langone Health
Catherine Manley-Cullen, MS, RN, Vice President, Nursing & Patient Care Services, NYU Langone Health

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

In this presentation, attendees will learn how a culturally diverse community teaching hospital in urban southwest Brooklyn, N.Y., improved its inpatient experience and HCAHPS scores by creating a culture of empathy and compassion. Embarking on a massive culture shift, staff moved from task-based “rounding” to connecting with self, patients, families and one another in order to deliver a world-class experience to every patient, every time. In this session, speakers will review the strategy development, program creation and implementation processes that led NYU Langone Hospital—Brooklyn to see significant improvement in its Press Ganey scores within one year.

Summer Allen, MD, Director, Patient Experience, Mayo Clinic
Sheryl Nemec, MS, Patient Experience Manager, Mayo Clinic
Lukas Madson, MA, Patient Experience Senior Advisor, Mayo Clinic

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Medical Practice & Consumerism

Mayo Clinic Health System (MCHS) piloted a multidisciplinary care team improvement model that engaged all disciplines (clinician, nursing and desk staff) within a care team to improve a shared goal and impact patient care. Using leadership and team engagement tactics, patient experience insights and point of care insights about operational measures, combined with a structured improvement cycle process, teams were able to improve and achieve set goals for patient experience improvement within six months. In this session, attendees will learn how MCHS used the care team improvement model to improve patient care and the staff work environment.

Cassandra Cuesta, MHA, CPXP, Senior Manager, Patient Experience, Temple University Hospital
Roxana Taveira, MHSA, Administrative Director, Oncology Services, Temple University Hospital

Focus Area: Patient Experience: Across the Continuum

This session will detail how Temple University Hospital Cancer Center improved the patient experience and positively impacted the level of employee engagement among its staff and leadership. This complex, high-volume, accredited cancer center embarked on a journey to improve its subpar and stagnant outpatient experience scores by engaging front-line staff. Attendees will learn how the outcome of this effort led to dramatic improvement in patient experience scores and created a new sense of collaboration between radiation oncology and infusion staff with a similar impact on cancer center employee engagement, specifically NDNQI® nursing engagement.

Kellie Barr, BSN, RN, Patient Experience Manager, LifeBridge Health/Sinai Hospital
Katie Starkey, MS, Director, Patient Experience, Sinai Hospital of Baltimore

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Nursing Leadership to Advance Compassionate Connected Care

Committed to delivering consistent, high-quality patient experiences, Sinai Hospital was troubled by declining scores in nurse communication. Learn how those scores were improved through implementation of Press Ganey’s Compassionate Connected Care™ model, with a focus on rounding. Attendees will hear how Sinai consistently focused on rounding to connect with the patient using empathy, with an emphasis on coaching and mentoring employees; adopted mandatory behaviors to improve the patient experience; and reduced patient and family suffering.

Nikole Devries, MSN, RN, CPHQ, Director, Performance Improvement and Patient Engagement, Southwest Healthcare System

Focus Area: Patient Experience: In-Care Experience

Cultural transformation in this large health care organization was the foundation for understanding and utilizing data to engage staff and foster a better patient experience. Attend this session to learn how Southwest Healthcare System leveraged its partnership with Press Ganey to dive into its data and review opportunities for performance improvement. Attendees will also learn the importance of creating a foundation for improvement and how to utilize various Press Ganey solutions to implement patient-centric practices and drive measurable improvement in patient experience scores.

Barry Goldberg, MD, MBA, FACC, FAAP, FASE, Chief, Pediatric Cardiology – Southside Hospital Northwell Health Physician Partners

Focus Area: Clinical Excellence: Physician Leadership Across the Continuum of Care

Improved patient-physician interactions result in improved patient compliance, decreased suffering and improved outcomes. To strengthen connection to its patient, Northwell Health posts patient experience survey scores (star ratings) and comments on the hospital’s website. During this session, attendees will hear about the journey to transparency from a physician’s perspective, including overcoming physician resistance, the importance of giving the physician a voice, peer mentoring of low performers during the comment appeal process, and rewarding high performers.I.