Message on the Patient Experience

There were stark declines in Patient Experience performance across the nation, and you will read how as an organization, despite these national declines, we were still able to deliver safe, high-quality, loving care. These achievements are certainly not the result of the Patient Experience team alone, but truly reflective of the service lines and departments that partner with us.

You will read about something that is critically important to us as an organization: our journey to anti-racism. As we look back on recent times, we cannot unsee what we have seen—a sweeping pandemic that disproportionately upended the lives of people of color, compounded by brutal inequities that cast a light on institutional racism across the globe. Mount Sinai has been and is actively committed to anti-racist efforts, and we in the Office of Patient Experience knew we had to carry the torch forward.

In 2021, we supported the creation and implementation of our Policy on Responding to Racist or Discriminatory Patient Behavior, which states zero tolerance for any patient, family member, or visitor who displays racist or discriminatory behavior to our staff. The policy includes guidance for how to escalate these issues, respond to patients, and support staff who were the target of these behaviors, in real time.

We’ve also transformed our data strategy to elevate voices of color. You will read about how we have identified disparities in who responds to our experience surveys, how we have created the first-ever equity goal to increase responses from our patients of color, and how we leveraged predictive analytics to help us get there.

We are also excited to share the results of our first system-wide workforce engagement survey, launched in June 2021. The “Your Voice Counts” survey was a gift from our employees—more than 20,000 members of our workforce shared their voice and told us how we can work together to make Mount Sinai the best it can be. For example, we heard that safety and teamwork matter most, and we will share how these critical insights are driving positive change.

Please elevate and celebrate your colleagues highlighted in this report. Thank you for reading, and we look forward to sharing our achievements in 2022.

– Erica Rubinstein, MS, LCSW, CPXP

A generation from now, we will still be talking about COVID-19. Like the assassination of President Kennedy and 9/11, COVID-19 created a break in our collective timeline. Our lives will never be the same. Yet we pressed on, delivering safe, equitable, compassionate, and, yes, loving care to our patients, despite grappling with the ravages of the pandemic. In the face of unrelenting headwinds, we saw example after example of genuine excellence in care. That resilience—delivering exceptional care while facing extraordinary challenges—is at the core of what it means to work at Mount Sinai.

The 2021 Annual Report captures these stories—the compassion of our caregivers, the uniqueness of our patients, and the humanity behind our masks.

– Arthur A. Gianelli, FACHE