Project Summary

The Patient Experience Report App project proposes creating an app that allows Sutter Health employees to provide feedback on their experiences as patients when they receive care at Sutter facilities. Similar to the existing Patient Safety Reporting (PSR) system, this app would allow employees to quickly share observations about areas for improvement, such as unclear signage or repetitive appointment notifications. Employees, as "secret shoppers," could provide valuable feedback for enhancing patient experience without affecting formal patient satisfaction scores.

Recommended App Features

1. Collaborative Messaging or Community Features:

   • Purpose: To facilitate discussion among employees about their patient experience feedback and to share best practices for service improvements.
   • Reasoning: Allowing employees to discuss issues and share ideas about patient experiences encourages collaboration and fosters a culture of continuous improvement. Collaborative messaging also creates a shared space for team discussions on implementing feedback effectively.
   • Benefit for the Project: Facilitates deeper insights by allowing employees to build on each other's observations, which helps prioritize feedback and generate more comprehensive solutions. It creates a proactive, engaged community of contributors working toward common goals.
   • Benefit for Sutter Health Culture: Encourages a culture of openness and problem-solving, where every employee feels their voice matters and is instrumental in enhancing patient care. This aligns with Sutter Health’s collaborative and inclusive work environment.

2. Onboarding App:

   • Purpose: To guide employees through the process of submitting meaningful feedback via the app, including training on recognizing actionable opportunities for improvement.
   • Reasoning: To ensure high-quality submissions and minimize vague or non-actionable feedback, it is important to train users on how to best observe and report issues. An onboarding module would help new users understand how to make the most impactful suggestions.
   • Benefit for the Project: Helps standardize the quality of submissions, ensuring that feedback is useful and actionable, which streamlines the process of reviewing and implementing changes.
   • Benefit for Sutter Health Culture: Reinforces the organization’s commitment to supporting its employees through training and development, which in turn leads to higher engagement and a consistent level of contribution from all staff members.

3. Patient App (Employee as Patient):

   • Purpose: To enable employees to submit feedback while they are acting as patients and to integrate this feedback directly into an improvement workflow.
   • Reasoning: An easy-to-use mobile app for employees who are also patients provides a convenient way to submit real-time feedback during their experience, ensuring observations are fresh and detailed.
   • Benefit for the Project: Ensures timely feedback, allowing for immediate follow-up. Employees who use the app while still in a care setting can provide more accurate and specific observations, which helps in making focused improvements.
   • Benefit for Sutter Health Culture: Demonstrates Sutter Health’s dedication to listening to its employees and improving based on their direct experiences, enhancing trust and fostering a shared commitment to organizational improvement.

Recommended App Mix and Benefits

The optimal solution for this project would include collaborative messaging/community features, a patient-focused app for employee feedback, and an onboarding component to train users.

1. Benefits to the Project:

• Community-Driven Feedback Enhancement: Collaborative features allow feedback to be refined collectively, leading to more effective improvements.
• Timely and Actionable Insights: A dedicated app for employees acting as patients ensures that feedback is relevant and submitted immediately, capturing real-time experiences.
• Standardized High-Quality Input: Onboarding ensures that all feedback is meaningful, minimizing vague submissions and making the review process efficient.

2. Supporting Sutter Health's Culture and Brand:

• Employee Empowerment: Encourages staff to actively participate in improving patient care, reinforcing Sutter Health’s culture of inclusivity and continuous improvement.
• Commitment to Quality: Demonstrates a proactive stance on quality improvement by valuing firsthand experiences from employees as patients, thereby enhancing the patient-centered care approach.
• Transparency and Engagement: Collaborative features foster a transparent dialogue about the patient experience, engaging employees across the organization in shared initiatives for growth.