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Jon Tanner, program director, human understanding and Dr. Gregory Makoul, chief transformation officer , NRC HEALTH“We help health organizations look beyond the care setting and take into account the entirety of a patient’s life,” says Dr. Gregory Makoul, chief transformation officer at NRC Health. “Our goal is to improve the experience and delivery of care with a programmatic approach that prioritizes Human Understanding.”
Addressing what matters to patients, families, and care-team members is the foundation of exceptional healthcare, and NRC Health understands this better than anyone. Rooted in a commitment to Human Understanding, NRC Health believes each moment of a patient’s journey is an integral part of their overall experience. For over four decades, the company has been at the forefront of providing personalized healthcare by enabling organizations to comprehend and respond to the needs of every patient they serve.
Untangling the Age-Old Snarl
NRC Health empowers leading healthcare systems to establish long-term relationships with every patient rather than relying on one-time insights.
“Over the years, the approach to improving patient experience has relied on retrospective surveys. Elevating experience requires a fresh approach, one that sees experience as extending beyond the care setting, recognizes what matters to people on both sides of the stethoscope, prioritizes human connection and health equity, and puts ‘How are you doing?’ on equal footing with ‘How did we do?’”, says Makoul.
This personalized approach is made possible through cutting-edge technology and data analysis. NRC Health’s MyStory and MyView solutions seamlessly integrate with electronic health records, allowing care teams to quickly and easily view a summary of information that patients share about themselves, their health, and their care, providing a comprehensive view of essential context and perspectives. This is crucial for identifying opportunities and needs that are not apparent at an aggregate level.
NRC Health also gathers information from patient feedback surveys to enrich the comprehensive summary. As a result, a hospitalist or an urgent care physician gets a basic knowledge of the patient’s context and past experience, even during the first visit. This is a major advancement compared to the traditional way of quantifying encounters, calculating averages, and using those scores as benchmarks for improvement.
Moreover, NRC Health realizes that it is more important to focus on the behaviors and outcomes that scores are meant to reflect than the scores themselves.
“A sole focus on scores can create a sense that patient experience is just a bad-news discipline. . NRC Health is working to change this perception by emphasizing the importance of building relationships and recognizing the positive aspects of patient feedback,” says Jon Tanner, program director, Human Understanding at NRC Health.
NRC Health’s Compliment Sharing solution uses natural language processing to automatically identify positive patient feedback and share that feedback with frontline workers in real-time at scale to recognize and motivate care teams.
For NRC Health, the importance of patient experience is not limited to delivering better care; it also directly impacts other critical outcomes like quality, safety, loyalty, and revenue.
Our goal is to improve the experience and delivery of care with a programmatic approach that prioritizes Human Understanding
Tales of Excellence
A humanized approach to care has enabled NRC Health to leave an impression whenever it engages with clients.
A great example of this can be found in their work with a major health system in the Midwest that implemented NRC’s MyStory program. It focused on each patient’s needs, preferences, and challenges. The program yielded incredible results, with patients rating the health system seven points higher on the net promoter score and demonstrating significant gains on all other experience metrics.
This engagement started in primary care to help patients build stronger relationships with their care providers. Over time, it evolved and expanded to include all specialty care, inpatient care, and emergency care— making it a true system-wide solution.
In recent months, the health system has further expanded the program, working closely with NRC Health to develop patient journeys that support maternity care.
Another example of utilizing the Human Understanding program to personalize experiences can be found at the McLeod Health network.
McLeod Health comprises of seven hospitals with more than 800 physicians, 2,000 registered nurses, and 8,500 employees, wanted to reach out to 100 percent of their patients with post-discharge calls to identify each patient’s risk for readmission. However, as the health system expanded, the turnover of leaders and staff led to a drop in overall participation. Eventually, only a couple of units could complete post-discharge calls consistently, and capacity bandwidth became an issue. To streamline the post-discharge contact operations, McLeod Health implemented NRC Health’s Human Understanding Program.
By identifying and following up on the transitions risks of individual patients McLeod Health has been able to greatly improve overall patient sentiment. A comparison of CAHPS results showed that 82.8 percent of patients who participated in inpatient transition calls positively rated nurse communication. The results clearly indicate that intelligent intervention has led to significant improvements in almost all experiential measures for patients.
To demonstrate Human Understanding to their patients, McLeod Health utilized NRC Health’s solutions to reach out to 100% of discharged patients. McLeod Health achieved the impressive feat of contacting all patients within 24-48 hours of discharge, thanks to the assistance of NRC Health. This was accomplished without straining staff capabilities.
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A sole focus on scores can create a sense that patient experience is just a bad-news discipline. NRC Health is working to change this perception by emphasizing the importance of building relationships and recognizing the positive aspects of patient feedback
By identifying and following up on the transitions risks of individual patients McLeod Health has been able to greatly improve overall patient sentiment. A comparison of CAHPS results showed that 82.8 percent of patients who participated in inpatient transition calls positively rated nurse communication. The results clearly indicate that intelligent intervention has led to significant improvements in almost all experiential measures for patients.
Enabling NRC Health to craft these success stories is the strong customer-centric culture it has built over the years. It treats every client like a partner and never hesitates to go the extra mile to support them with solutions that can improve the patient experience.
Its research-intensive background, combined with its commitment to continuous learning and improvement, sets it apart in the industry. The company is making great strides by focusing more on digital channels and becoming the go-to partner for healthcare organizations seeking to provide a holistic, human-centered patient experience.
Company
NRC HEALTH
Management
Jon Tanner, program director, human understanding and Dr. Gregory Makoul, chief transformation officer , NRC HEALTH
Description
Addressing what matters to patients, families, and care-team members is the foundation of exceptional healthcare, and NRC Health understands this better than anyone. For over four decades, the company has been at the forefront of personalizing healthcare by enabling organizations to comprehend the needs of every individual they serve.
NRC HEALTH News
Lurie Children’s expands partnership with NRC Health to gain valuable consumer insights
“Lurie Children’s has a recognized commitment to understanding and continuously improving the experience for their patients and families,” said Helen Hrdy, NRC Health’s Chief Growth Officer. “By expanding their partnership to include Market Insights, they are demonstrating their passion to deepen their understanding of the communities they serve. We are honored to be their partner of choice.”
Market Insights facilitates more informed decision-making and further strengthens Lurie Children's well-established reputation as a top-tier provider of exceptional care. NRC Health's innovative solution leverages the insights derived from an annual survey of over 300,000 consumers to evaluate and monitor critical aspects of healthcare across 300 U.S. markets, using a comprehensive set of over 200 distinct metrics.
Adopted by leading medical institutions and healthcare systems nationwide, Market Insights offers access to the most extensive repository of syndicated data in the healthcare sector. It includes a proprietary tool for generating insightful reports and the option for customized research solutions, enabling the addressing of specific business inquiries.