Hi, everyone. This is Erica Carbajal with Becker's HealthCare. Thank you all for tuning in to this episode of the Becker's HealthCare podcast series. Today, we're gonna be discussing patient centric care and its impact on the future of health care organizations. Joining me for today's discussion is Faria Siddiqui, director of health care services at the Kaleidoscope Group. Faria, thank you so much for joining us today. Hi, Erica. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Before we delve into the topic, do you mind just sharing a bit about yourself and your work in health care? Yes. Of course. So as you said, I serve as the director of health care services at Kaleidoscope Group. We are a global change management consulting firm with over thirty years of experience in several business industries. I specifically work with our health care clients, so that's health care systems, global pharmaceutical companies, nonprofits, community organizations. And what we do together is we develop and execute both their internal and their external people strategies. So that means employee experience, organizational culture, patient experience, you know, different strategies on how to get involved in the community and so on. Yeah. Thanks, Priya. Some some wide ranging work there touching really all aspects when it comes to health care in terms of employees, organization, and patient experience. So patient centered care is at the forefront of health care strategies this year. It's a term that comes up a lot in conversations with health system leaders. So can you start there and share a bit about what are the essential elements of an effective patient centered care strategy and why? Yeah. You know, that's a great question. And I always say there's three high level points that I believe many organizations overlook when it comes to their patient experience strategies. And number one, prioritization. Prioritizing patient centered care. You know, we can have talks about this all day long, but we know that in reality, leaders of health care institutions are faced with so many competing priorities, especially now with all of these recent changes at a federal level, whether that's budget cuts, reimbursement changes, workforce and staffing issues, unionization, whatever it is. It is very easy to, you know, conduct a patient satisfaction survey, get the results, and let the results sit under a pile of other issues. If you let patient experience fall to the side, you will see the impact in all of your other priority areas because it is all connected. Number two, so important to include the entire patient journey. So a lot of times, people think that patient experience is just that interaction between the physician and the patient. It's actually all aspects of the patient journey through the health care system. So at Kaleidoscope Group, we have a seven step patient journey map, and that starts from, you know, health system promotion and prevention efforts. So how does a patient hear about the hospital system? Are they in community served, you know, through mobile clinics, workshops? What is the health care system doing to prevent disease at a community health level? And then it goes on, you know, to when the patient interacts with the front desk staff the first time they come in. Do they feel welcome? Do they feel like they belong? Is someone helping them figure out where to go? And it goes all the way, you know, to discharge and follow-up care. So all of these aspects need to be considered. And then number three, integration into workflows. So ensuring that patient centered care is baked into our workflows. That looks like, you know, as a clinician, are you conducting regular family rounds along with the rounds you do with your students and your residents? As a nurse, are you helping to educate the patient without, you know, medical jargon? As an admin, are you creating, you know, comfortable waiting areas, providing resources, helping patients understand their billing? These are things that need to be embedded into the day to day habits of each role, and that comes, you know, with the rules and the structures that we create for our daily workflows. Along with that, we also have to be ready for resistance to change. So anytime we ask people to change their behaviors, we will be met with, you know, I forgot or I don't want to or, you know, that doesn't make sense to me. All of these different ways that people resist change, and there needs to be a plan to address that. So, you know, the three things, three essential elements for an effective strategy and patient centered care, prioritization, the patient journey map, and integration into workflows. Yeah. Faria, and I think you raise an interesting point just around the fact that patient centered care and and strategizing around this really begins before the clinical care actually happens, as you mentioned. It's much much broader than that. And on that note, can you share a bit about where organizational culture fits in here, and how can health care systems support providers to ensure that they're actually able to deliver thoughtful, compassionate care? Yeah. So like I said, providers are not solely responsible for patient experience. However, they tend to shoulder the most responsibility. We can't expect our, you know, physicians, our PAs, our nurse staff who are face to face with patients playing so many different roles already. Right? They're taking the history. They're doing the physical exam. They're diagnosing. They're also thinking of billing issues. They're scribing. Sometimes they're also teachers. Right? If they have students or residents in the room. And all of this while encounters are limited to maybe ten, fifteen minutes. At the same time, we're also asking them to ensure that the patient has an amazing experience, answer their questions, talk to their families, etcetera, etcetera. To do this effectively, we need to have a team to help support this objective. It can't all fall onto the shoulders of the health care worker. At the same time, we also need to realize that health care workers are human. Right? And they're dealing with an organizational culture in medicine and in health care that is not very forgiving. We are seeing this trend of unionization post COVID, and demands that these health care workers are making are actually very simple. Right? Give us a salary that we can survive on. Give us a holiday once in a while. Protect us from the growing levels of patient violence. If we want to ask health care workers to have empathy for their patients, we as health care leaders need to also have that empathy for our health care workers and create an organizational culture which helps them do that. Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of this bolts back to what we hear from, again, a lot of health system leaders just around placing more intentional focus and energy around alleviating physicians and clinicians from administrative burdens and really being able to focus on what they enjoy doing most and what they are trained to do, which is, you know, patient care. And so all of this is so interrelated. Fria, on the technology side, obviously, a major area in focus when it comes to patient engagement. How can organizations ensure that their technology on the technology side of things, that they're meeting the needs of diverse populations? Yeah. You know, currently, we are living in times where DE and I work is being censored. And, you know, that's fine, if you don't wanna use the words, whatever your politics are. But nobody can deny the fact that we are all different, whether that's, you know, diversity and race, physical ability, geographic location, education level, income level, every person is different. And as a business leader, if you ignore this fact, you will see the impact in your bottom line. And how does that show up? So as a health tech founder, if you are not including diverse perspectives when it comes to user experience, you will find it difficult in the implementation phase. So if a patient can't, you know, read the font on your screen, if there's no option for different languages, if there's no option to connect to a human in the virtual help desk, you know, versus AI, whatever it is, if it becomes difficult, patients will simply not use your app. And similarly, as a health care system leader, if you are choosing to invest in applications that are ultimately ineffective, that's money that's going down the drain. There are people, you know, whose role it is to consider which apps or AI apps are worth the investment of the hospital system. And really, it's the ones that people use. So, you know, how can tech meet the needs of diverse patients? The most important way to do this, and the most simple way to do this is to include diverse perspectives throughout the building stages of your app. Sometimes in the tech world, we can be very caught up, you know, in features and functions, making investors happy, all of the things that it takes to build an app. And we forget the basics. How are people using this app? Does it work for them? What are their complaints? What issues have they asked for while troubleshooting? Make sure that you have diverse groups of people test your app out and listen to their feedback. It's really as simple as that. Briha, looking ahead, how can patient centered care support the long term sustainability of health care organizations? What can leaders be doing now to ensure that this concept is meaningfully put into practice and at scale? Yeah. As we, you know, continue to see budget cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, changes in language and research funding and all of the other impacts of the, new administration's executive orders, it will be very easy to let patient centered care fall to the side. But I will say, you know, whoever chooses to ignore the patient, they will see the impact of that in their quality scores, in their health outcomes, in their reimbursement rates, honestly, in your lawsuits and in your health care system reputations. Right? So I can tell you a simple story. In my neighborhood where I grew up, all of my friends who are moms, they know, you know, which hospital to avoid for their OB GYN care and their labor and delivery, and they know which hospital is best for that type of care. And they all go to that one instead. So reputation amongst your community really says everything about how they are experiencing your hospital system and which system your consumers are actually gonna use for their care. So, making sure that this patient centered care is sustainable at your organization is very important. And how can you ensure that it's sustainable? At Kaleidoscope Group, we have the three c's to sustainable change management. In true consulting fashion, we have an acronym to make everything easier for everybody. The three c's are commitment, course, and competence. And commitment comes at two different levels. The first is executive commitment. Commitment from the c suite looks like appropriate resources and budgeting, guidance for committees and groups led with the charge for change, speaking up publicly and advocating. Without commitment from the c suite, you are not gonna have a sustainable level of infrastructure. And it's gonna infrastructure. And it's going to be interesting to see, you know, as we continue to see the impact of federal level changes where commitment is at the C suite. And then commitment can also come from a change agent level at each department. So that's nurse staff of patient experience, medical billing staff of patient experience, someone who is committed to bettering the patient experience within their sphere of influence and is ready to manage the issues that come up with implementation. Number two, course, we've talked about this a bit already. Development of a clear strategic plan where patient experience is not just, you know, a couple of folks in a department, but it is integrated into the daily workflow of each person in the health care patient journey. And number three, competence, ensuring your employees are educated and competent in implementing these changes. So that's like, how are these how are how are they being educated on these changes? How are they being supported when they have questions? Is there someone they can go to, for help? So those are the three c's, commitment, course, and competence. Bria, is there anything else before we close out? We didn't cover on the topic that you wanted to mention. Yeah. You know, we are in interesting times right now with the new administration changes. We are still seeing the downstream impacts of how our industry functions. We are seeing changes to women's health, LGBTQ health, removal of equity based programming and research funding, potential changes to how Medicare and Medicaid reimburses. Regardless of your politics, these are huge changes that we are gonna continue to grapple with and, continue to see how they impact our functioning within a health care system on a day to day basis and what outcomes we're gonna face for those functioning decisions. So throughout all of this change, I wanna urge our health care leaders who are listening. Number one, go back to your values. You know, you will have to face decisions on how to manage this change. Don't let your patients become deprioritized. Number two, stay agile, stay growth minded, stay innovative through the change. And number three, we always encourage honest and empathetic communication to your staff and to your public because when it comes to leading change rather than letting change lead you, the number one thing is maintaining trust. Maria, thank you so much for being on today. We appreciate your insights. Thank you for having me, Erica. It was it was a pleasure. Yeah. Absolutely. And we also wanna thank our podcast sponsor, the Kaleidoscope Group. And listeners, you can tune into additional podcast episodes by visiting the podcast page on our website at beckershospitalreview.com. Thanks, everyone.