The Care Experience Collaborative, now underway for the past six months, is focused on improving care experience across Dartmouth Health in unique clinical contexts utilizing a Lean Six Sigma approach. At the first learning session on December 19, clinical team members, researchers, administrative staff, improvement scholars, patients and care partners gathered to introduce and share developing improvement work.
On May 30, Alice Kennedy, MPH, Research Project Director at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, welcomed 76 participants to the Spring learning session. Here the group reconvened to check in, share successes and challenges, and align a shared sense of purpose to spring forward into the next phase of work. Such learning opportunities create space to learn from each other’s experiences, and plan to deeply engage in improvement work with teams through a focus on culture, leadership infrastructure and staff engagement.
The mission of Care Experience at Dartmouth Health is to create a kind and trusting care environment for patients, families and healthcare teams. This mission was amplified in the opening keynote address “If We Get Experience Right, Everything Else Will Follow,” presented by Tom Manion, MPA, Chief Operating Officer of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Tom shared his powerful reflections during the COVID pandemic as the former President and CEO of New London Hospital.
As a new leader to the organization hired in March of 2020 at the start of the COVID pandemic, Tom spoke to “the significance of transparency, communication and building trust with staff” during this difficult time. He went on to share that “once we truly focused on investing in our people–listening, learning, celebrating–we began to see improvements in employee engagement, patient experience and financial performance.” As his session title suggests, “everything followed when we got experience right,” while also emphasizing the importance of your mission, vision and values in driving engagement and improving care delivery.
Following this inspirational address, members from the 14 improvement teams reported out updates from their work linking initiatives to one or more of Dartmouth Health’s care experience strategic plan drivers: access, engagement, relationship-centered, environment and safety, caring and culture.
Team updates were both impressive and quite varied. Some examples included the community group practices initiative focused on improving patient experience by using data and patient feedback to address root causes of complaints and developing tools for staff to focus on the drivers of satisfaction. Another team is conducting a pilot study in Nashua regarding the importance of having medical interpreters present for appointments. There are teams addressing the inpatient experience of rooms being clean and quiet at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital and Southwestern Vermont Medical Center and a system-wide focus on utilizing peer-to-peer provider coaching to improve engagement and communication skills.
“Improvement teams are working hard on improving the known drivers of care experience outcomes,” says Brant Oliver, PhD, CPXP, Dartmouth Health System Vice President for Care Experience and Executive Director of the Promise Partnership, who leads the Care Experience Collaborative. “We are pleased to report that since the inception of the Collaborative in December, we have observed improvements in patient experience HCAHPS scores. Our success depends on inclusion, belonging and engagement of all in our work together. By using Lean Six Sigma improvement methods supported by a virtual learning collaborative and expert improvement coaching, we can drive coordinated action at scale to improve care experience outcomes.”
The Care Experience Collaborative is part of the Promise Partnership, a coproduction learning health system initiative that is jointly sponsored by The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at the Geisel School of Medicine and the Office of Care Experience at the Value Institute at Dartmouth Health. It aims to deliver on a bold and distinctive vision to bring the collective expertise of the Dartmouth community together to provide the best possible care, experience and outcomes for our workforce and the people we serve.
Carol Barsky, MD, Chief Quality and Value Officer for Dartmouth Health provided closing remarks that highlighted the success of these efforts. “We’re witnessing real improvement happening across the system and seeing the Promise Partnership come to life. By harnessing our collective expertise, we can truly change health care for the better.”
Learn more about the Promise Partnership or read our one-page overview.