Measuring and quantifying the intangible—feelings and perceptions, fears, doubts, anxiety and uncertainty—and uniting insights from the patient voice with quantitative measures of care processes and outcomes has the power to uncover profound insights. It is this intersection of social science and business intelligence, the art of delivering compassionate care with an evidence base of processes and outcomes that drives the work we do and enables us to reduce patient and caregiver suffering across the health care continuum.

Professional Biography 

Deirdre Mylod, PhD, joined Press Ganey in 1997 and currently serves as the executive director of the organization’s Institute for Innovation and senior vice president of Research & Analytics. In this joint role, she is responsible for advancing the understanding of the entire patient experience, including patient satisfaction, clinical process and outcomes. Through the Institute, Mylod partners with leading health care providers to study and implement transformative concepts for improving the patient experience.


As a prominent thought leader within Press Ganey and the industry, regularly lectures on such topics as public policy, legislation and the future of the patient experience. She is the architect of Press Ganey’s Suffering Framework, which reframes the view of the patient experience as a means to understand unmet patient needs and reduce patient suffering.  She has extensive expertise in survey development, methodology and statistics. 


Throughout her time at Press Ganey, Mylod has served in a variety of key leadership roles. Most recently, she served as the vice president of Improvement Services, during which she oversaw the organization’s Client Improvement Management teams. These teams offer clients quality-improvement strategy and solutions to enhance their performance in patient evaluations of care. Previously, she was responsible for developing Press Ganey’s HCAHPS initiative and managing clients’ participation in state-reporting projects. Mylod currently serves as Press Ganey’s liaison to the National Quality Forum (NQF) and has served on committees on public reporting through the NQF. Mylod holds a master’s degree and a PhD in psychology from the University of Notre Dame.