The Office of Patient Experience includes Service Excellence, which encompasses patient relations, coaching, and more. And in turn, Service Excellence encompasses service recovery—the process of identifying and fixing problems in real time. It is at the core of patient experience and rests on the Mount Sinai values of safety, equity, empathy, creativity, teamwork, and agility. Each site in the Mount Sinai Health System engages in Service Excellence based on its specific needs.
In 2021, Mount Sinai South Nassau’s Service Excellence Department developed a patient-centric, innovative model of unit-based Patient Experience coordinators to support the work of interdisciplinary teams. Their mission is to build on the strong foundation of the Journey to Excellence Framework, a longtime patient experience initiative at Mount Sinai South Nassau, and provide support to patients, families, and staff.
The coordinators’ objectives are to identify and address barriers and embed best practices into the workflow to improve overall experience. The Service Excellence unit-based strategy starts with relationship building, as the Patient Experience coordinators become an extension of, and a bridge between, patients and the interdisciplinary team.
“The Patient Experience Coordinator serves as an invaluable member of the team. They communicate efficiently and empathetically with patients, families, and staff and recognize patient-relations issues before they escalate,” says Anthony Sosa, RN, Nurse Manager on D2 West. “They have been very helpful in managing patient and family expectations and engaging staff to become part of the solution. Our Patient Experience coordinators are an asset to the organization, and every floor should have one.”
“The Patient Experience Coordinator serves as an invaluable member of the team. They communicate efficiently and empathetically with patients, families, and staff and recognize patient-relations issues before they escalate.”
- Anthony Sosa, RN
Service Excellence team members, from left: Tess Caffray, Christina Argyos, Rita Regan, Emily Jweid, Olivia MacGregor, and Kenneth Schwartz.
The impact of each Patient Experience coordinator is captured using a direct observations tool, which quantifies each intervention in service categories. These categories include the number of patients visited on, daily rounding, number of call bells responded to and interventions taken, referrals to support services, connections facilitated between patients and clinicians regarding their plan of care, and more. Weekly summary reports are reviewed with each nurse manager for real-time feedback and action planning. Direct observation and appreciative coaching are provided to members of every discipline during and after their normal interactions with patients, families, and each other, with a primary emphasis on praising excellent communication techniques. This framework continues to align with the Mount Sinai Health System goals related to data strategy, ongoing cultural transformation, narration of care, and care checks.
Through problem-solving, de-escalation, and proactive, timely service recovery, the team looks to support the patient’s confidence and demonstrate the strong cross-departmental teamwork of Mount Sinai South Nassau.
“Teamwork is what makes patients feel safe and employees feel respected, and we have a great team,” says Emily Jweid, MBA, CPXP, Service Excellence Manager. “Mount Sinai South Nassau is proud to welcome our new Service Excellence Team as they provide support to all hospital staff and patients on our Journey to Excellence.”