Q & A With Megan Chavez, VP, Cook Children's Experience
People Caring for People
We sat down with Megan Chavez, Vice President of Cook Children’s Experience, to discuss how the patient family experience department works with teams across the Cook Children’s System to cultivate healthy experiences for patient families and our teams.
Q: Let’s start with the basics; what does “experience” mean in the context of health care?
A: Experience for our patient families is their perception of their health care experience; their emotional journey, the trauma of receiving care, the fear of the unknown, their relationship with the people that are caring for them. The basis of all of that is a trusting human-to-human relationship, and that’s really where we started to understand that the field of experience is fundamental to the practice of health care.
Q: What are some examples of things that contribute to experience?
A: The thing that matters most is their interactions with all of us. In addition, it’s every touch point, every conversation, every process, technology and the physical environment.
Even the building itself; it’s really hard for me to feel relaxed in a sterile and very cold environment that’s full of loud noises. If you look in our buildings, you’ll see that there is designed thoughtfulness at every level. There’s small, hidden things on the floor because kids, when they’re nervous, look down. When you look up, there are wonderful paintings above your head. Parents are going to look straight ahead, so we think about what to put at their eye line. We’re trying to do everything we can to tell them “We got you; we’re in this with you.”
Q: The patient and care team relationships are a huge part of the Experience Department’s focus. Why is that?
A: We’ve learned that a patient’s experience impacts their recovery and overall outcome. In the last handful of years, we have started to look at experience as an ecosystem of creating really strong human-to-human relationships in order to create this safe, trusting environment to provide and receive healthcare.
And pediatrics is even more complicated because you’re dealing with a whole family. These moments are often life-defining not just for the patient, but for the entire family. We have to understand what creates strong human connections and what gets in the way of it.
Q: How do you go about analyzing if those connections are happening, both for patients and clinicians?
A: The way we stay really close to the experience and make it part of decision making is through a very comprehensive, continuous listening strategy. We are always getting information and looking for behavior signals from patients and families as well as staff about what they are thinking and feeling—do they feel respected, heard, valued and cared for?
We ask patient families in a survey, “how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or family member?” And this year our goal is 85.7% recommend us highly; that tells us people felt really cared for if they are willing to send their loved ones to us for care. Because everyone plays a part whether you are patient-facing or behind the scenes making those moments possible, we have our CareShare bonus based on this. We are exceeding that goal fiscal year-to-date at 86.4%, which is phenomenal. Another way we listen is through our17 family advisory councils and our parents can tell us what is working and what’s not.
We also know that in order to bring our best self to our patients and families, we as individuals have to be ok and our teams have to be working well together. Staff working well together is our biggest key driver in creating patient family trust in their care team. We are getting better and better at connecting the dots between team experience and patient family experiences. We can tell what is working and what’s not from those insights. For example, employees typically stay at Cook Children’s for a long time. People say they feel they have a place here and they are surrounded by like-minded people and we are focused on doing the right thing for patients and families. That’s the magic sauce; people saying, “It's different here, I have a professional home here and I feel like what’s right for the patient guides our decision making.”
Q: Cook Children’s has historically made patient experience a priority. How does this department further that mission?
A: Cook Children has been doing lots of things that are patient family experience-based, we just have now pulled it all together into one department. Cook Children’s has grown so much. We’re so big and our patients are sicker and more complex because we can support them. We have care teams that may be working with another care team that has never met. So, we want to make sure that they still have that same cohesion even though they’re working across lots of geographies and locations.
Q: What makes your role rewarding for you?
A: Every day you see the best of people. Even when families are coming in and facing this horrible thing and that might not bring out the best in people. But we don’t back off. We can’t stop car accidents from happening, but what I can guarantee you is that we are going to circle that family with love and support and make sure that they have the best next steps that they can have. That’s pretty incredible to be a part of.