Who: Lisa Allen, 57
New role: First chief patient experience officer at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore.
How she defines the job: “The role is really being defined as translating the key concepts of service excellence and patient experience. It's keeping this at the forefront of everyone's mind with all the changes that are taking place.”
Her background: “I'm a medical anthropologist by background. I'm also trained in lean and performance-improvement techniques. For me, it's combining those skill sets together. What's the culture of the organization? What's the culture of the patients?” Before joining Johns Hopkins, Allen was VP of quality, patient experience and patient safety at Steward Health Care System, Boston.
On patient satisfaction: The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey measures patient satisfaction and is partially tied to payment in Medicare's value-based purchasing program. “I've seen much greater attention (paid to patient experience) from senior leadership because of the financial incentives tied to HCAHPS.”
Works both ways: “I think people in healthcare want to have happy, satisfied patients. It makes their job much easier. It's mutually beneficial. Having all the pieces in place to make that happen is our job.”
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