Walk into a healthcare boardroom and you’ll find C-suite managers poring over hard data reports, analytics that tell them that, mostly, all patients are happy with them, all KPIs have been achieved. Shimmy up to the nurse manager on duty, and you’ll find out that she’s weary but yay, three patients have been discharged (including the one with the demanding hubby), so it’s all good. Take the lift down to reception, and they’ll tell you different tales of woe and wonder. Why don’t these stories always align? After all, there is a myriad of measurement taking place – statistical data, patient surveys, focus groups, patient emails, improved processes and tools….

Creating a true, holistic picture of the patient experience is challenging. The disparate pieces of research that take place in a healthcare setting don’t always fit together or come together. Staff are listening to differing views, reading contradictory reports and acting on different outcomes and priorities. Indeed, in a 2015 patient experience survey of 1561 respondents from healthcare settings in over 21 countries, less than half had actually formally defined patient experience for their organisation (Beryl Institute).

Our 6E Framework aims to improve patient experience by offering healthcare settings a step-by-step guide on how to produce this true holistic picture. It not only gets you thinking about mapping the patient journey and uniting the disparate pieces of data that is collected throughout your setting on this ‘journey’ (EXPERIENCE), but it ensures the encapsulation of ‘patient stories’ and patient feelings (EMOTIONS) to build one clear purpose for all staff to follow (ENERGY) in improving the patient journey. It helps you develop an accurate strategic plan and implement solutions (EXECUTION) and ensures you measure and repeat your successes (EXCELLENCE). Ultimately, the framework develops your organisational capability in patient experience (EVOLUTION).

The Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust and Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust are examples of healthcare organisations that benefited from sound advice with improving their patient experience:

• Response rates quadrupled, covering more age, gender and ethnicity groups.
• Solid mapping and measurement of patient journey elements allowed for immediate implementable strategies – many as simple as the need to disseminate more information or provide further explanation to patients – to address concerns and issues.
• When the patient experience measurement was repeated within the same year, the level of patient satisfaction had significantly increased – doubled and tripled in some cases!
• In the Hertfordshire case, in some wards, 100% respondents felt listened to (up from 54%).

Patient Journeys. Emotions. A Team Living Its Purpose.

For some, these are soft, soppy, intangible metrics to measure. But for those in the industry of caring, there’s no denying its culture-changing results at the front-line.