We aim to deliver an exceptional experience at every interaction, every day.

In this section:

Priorities

Each experience with Texas Health, whether through its website, urgent care clinics, emergency departments, doctor’s offices or hospital rooms, leaves an impression. To fulfill our Vision of partnering with you for a lifetime of health and well-being, we must provide consumers with consistent, superior experiences. We want each person we care for to:

• Feel seen, heard, understood and respected.
• Receive compassionate, reliable, safe, quality and equitable care.
• Access the support they need, when and where they need it.

Enhancing our Interactions

Across the system, we provide extensive tools and training, and meet regularly to share and discuss evidence-based strategies for improving consumers’ experience. We also invest in strategies that:

Deliver Culturally Inclusive Care

North Texas is a melting pot of faiths, cultures, ethnicities and identities, and no two people are alike. We want to respect each individual’s health experiences, as well as their cultural identity or heritage, languages they speak, beliefs and religious background. Honoring individuality enables us to develop tailored care plans, communicate effectively and improve health outcomes.

Improve Understanding

We seek to fully understand consumers' medical histories, health needs and the best ways to care for them. To be effective, we must gather and share consumer information with other care team members. We do this through initial consultations, frequent rounding and when communicating post-discharge instructions. Communicating well builds trust, reduces anxiety and increases adherence to medication and treatment programs.

With over 100 languages spoken in our service area, we offer in-person and on-demand interpreter services to help us clearly convey information and understand patients and their families. We can also access 50 video languages, 200 audio languages and American Sign Language to communicate vital information rapidly.

To ease the understanding of both English and non-English speakers alike, we translate written materials, communicate at a 6th-grade reading level and use videos and illustrations where feasible to convey essential information visually.

Intentional Connections

We want to focus on engaging with patients and their loved ones, so we use technologies that free up caregivers’ time, giving them more opportunities to connect with their patients. For example, rather than documenting at the nurse’s station, our teams use tablets to take notes while rounding with patients and their families.

Some of our Texas Health Physicians Group practices also are trialing an app that records and automates medical transcription, note-taking and documentation. This has reduced time spent charting, improved face-to-face interactions and reduced labor costs associated with using scribes. Consumers also have felt more comfortable and candid during their visits without other employees in the exam room.

2022 Highlights

Texas Health:

• Launched an updated rounding process and platform across wholly-owned hospitals to capture patient feedback to facilitate actionable improvements. Feedback is recorded on tablets, and insights are generated in a Nurse Leader Rounding Dashboard that tracks and provides trend reports of progress against goals at the system, entity and unit levels. Considerable time was invested in helping care teams optimize these technologies, which also alert supporting departments to patients’ needs.
• Delivered high reliability rounds training across all wholly-owned hospitals and behavioral health facilities to strengthen patient and family connections. The training teaches nurse leaders how to gather real-time insights and respond effectively, apply reliable and critical relational skills to the rounding process and reinforce Texas Health’s Promise Principles to improve the patient experience.
• Invited patient experience consultants to work alongside hospital care teams to strengthen their hands-on approach to care.
• Expanded the use of a video interpreter service across the hospital system and integrated it into THPG and Texas Health Breeze Urgent Care™ clinics.
• Paired nurses with staff interpreters to gather feedback from limited-English-proficient patients about their experiences. Comments were shared with local leaders for review and follow-up.
• Completed 85,075 visits at THPG trialing a documentation app, which providers were pleased with.
• Enabled THPG providers to access short instructional videos on creating meaningful connections with their patients and families and improving the overall patient experience.

Measuring our Progress

We evaluate the consumer experience in various ways to monitor the overall performance and determine where refinements are needed. We use:

• Nationally standardized surveys designed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®), which rate consumer experiences with hospitals, healthcare providers and more. Surveys are specific to care settings, such as inpatient, emergency departments, medical practices, ambulatory surgery centers, outpatient services, outpatient rehabilitation and urgent care.
• Text messaging to gather quick feedback.

We measure consumer loyalty on a scale of -100 to 100 using a survey that asks consumers how likely they are to recommend Texas Health or Texas Health Physicians Group to a family member or friend. Our goal is to achieve a top-quartile consumer experience. Please see our 2022 Social Purpose Summary Report for survey data.

2022 Highlights

Texas Health:

• Enabled Texas Health Breeze Urgent Care consumers to review their care experience on Google and Yelp.
• Was honored by Press Ganey for excellence in patient experience at five entities and by Healthgrades at three entities.