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Keynote: A Conversation Built For Care Webinar with Jill McCormick and Daniel Small

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Today on Keynote

Daniel Small: (Intro) we've admired the problem long enough. What are we going to do about it?

I'm Sarah Richardson, a former CIO and president of this week Health's 2 2 9 community development where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare at one connection at a time.

Our keynote show is designed to share conference level value with you every week. Now let's jump into the episode

And I'd also like to thank all of you, our listeners, participants for tuning in your engagement makes these discussions valuable and I'm thrilled to see such great participation, which speaking of, we've received a ton of questions ahead of today's session. So if you have additional questions during the webinar, please drop them into the chat and we will do our best to address them.

For rest assured, we've already gathered many questions that our panel will explore today. And a special thank you to our sponsor, Pixel Health, their support helps us create and deliver valuable content like this. So we're gonna jump in to today's discussion. Our panelist today, Jill McCormick. She's the co-founder and EVP of Design and Product Development at Pixel Health Labs, a firm known for bringing together clinical, operational and digital strategies to transform healthcare environments.

His focus is digital places and how they interact with physical spaces. And lastly, before we jump into the interactive part of today's session, I wanna highlight a few powerful themes that emerged in our preparation for today. Number one, leveraging influencers within your system. Those trusted voices who shape adoption and engagement.

Creates lasting impact. Second, thoughtful design must proceed technology decisions. As one of our panelists wisely said, you don't go shopping before you build the menu. And finally, success requires modular, flexible solutions built to scale that are able to adapt and enable purposeful architecture rather than reactive integration.

With that, we're gonna move into a seminar style conversation guided by several questions that were submitted in advance. So Jill and Daniel, let's share your amazing story.

This is wonderful opportunity.

Daniel Small: Thank you for having me. and Sarah, that was a wonderful capture of some of our conversations.

Sarah Richardson: Thank you. I can't wait for everybody else to hear all the amazing things you two have done together.

Jill McCormick: Awesome. All right, so let's get started. Dan, do you wanna kick us off?

Daniel Small: Yeah, I, so let's just start in what we know.

Or potentially trying to boil the ocean as it were, and solve all problems at once in large, failed or, I don't wanna say failed, but projects that maybe don't deliver the value that was initially sold to you and intended. And that's really what we're here to talk about is what is the playbook and the recipe to begin moving the needle on solving these experiences?

I think in our space, we've all done user journeys, I understand. But with the right recipe, I think we can begin to solve these problems more swiftly and effectively, Jill.

Jill McCormick: This sort of manifests as patient stress in provider burnout. And I just wanna share that although this seminar is focused mainly on the patient experience, that the providers feel it too.

So when all of these touch points come to bear. Our providers feel it too. One of the things in my human-centered design research, when I talk with providers, I often hear some version of I do more service recovery than I do treatment and evaluation or, something along those lines.

Are these types of solutions that give us some data, but are we really, understanding what's going on? There's a disconnect between what the health systems think experience is and also what patients actually say the experience is. And there's increasing number of studies that talk about how 96% of patient complaints are service quality related.

And so those are the things that Dan just mentioned, that sort of it's fragmentation in the patient journey that leads to all of these gaps in the patient experience. It says follow up on here is really lack of follow up, lack of communication where they're waiting for long times

So that's what patients are saying that patient experience is. But as we think about what patient experience actually is, we know that care quality is important. A lot of those numbers that you just are those brands that you just saw on. That other slide was really just focused on patient linking quality of care to patient experience.

And there's a measurement system around quality of care. We know quality of care is table stakes, our patients know that quality of care is table stakes, and what we're finding is that patients oftentimes don't know the difference between quality of service and quality of care. Or they just assume that they're going to experience quality of care, but I wanted to make sure that we understand that it's absolutely a balance here between quality of service and quality care, and that service quality can actually be a strategic differentiator.

Daniel Small: Now we get to the solution, right? So I have a colleague that says, we've admired the problem long enough. What are we going to do about it? And one of the things we could do about that is to align around a vision, and we'll get a little bit more into the how and the playbook of the matter. And Jill's a real expert in that space.

But, I'll tell a brief story about an experience we had here recently where we're trying to articulate what the digital vision of Hartford Healthcare is going forward. And there's a lot of questioning around the Google Cloud journey we're on and Why aren't we moving faster here?

I think we all assume just as people in the world that interact with digital and physical spaces on a daily basis, but when we're in the weeds in healthcare, we often forget to focus on those items or they're left over to the marketing department or some new digital and or innovation department. It's not really looked at holistically.

This has been shown for 20 years now in research, we know this, it's only getting worse. So there is a moment in the video where. The patient drives up and she has a companion app, and it tells her what floor that there are open parking spaces on and what side of the parking garage to go in. And that we've reserved a space for her because we knew in advance she was on her way, which we all do know.

It's just invisible sometimes. We intuit it, but we don't usually work on it. So here's what's great about that. We took this approach and that absolutely began to drive alignment throughout the organization because people can see it right? Experience is a language that people understand and when you can visualize it for them and tell a story.

Because everybody's on the same page around the vision and the experience that has been outlined, and then that begins to mitigate the risk of project failures and rework and investments that don't pay off and don't improve the lives of our colleagues and our patients. Jill.

Jill McCormick: Also points to when we're always trying to measure experience and with all those logos that I just shared before, like get our finger pinpointed on it. Just, I remember that story. I wasn't there with you when you presented that, but that 800 people just cheering and screaming about that one moment and just saying, you just collected qualitative data.

We know that's an important moment. And so how do you know the I importance that matters and how do you use that qualitative data to drive what people understand to be the experience. It was just such a palpable moment so thank you for sharing that.

We actually solve problems for ourselves instead of for them. And I love this framework because it helps to organize, the direction in which. need to sequence these things so that you can design intentionally. So I'll just pass that back to Jill.

Jill McCormick: Yeah, no I love that story.

because I think it really, This is like the hill I die on every day and I love and I share broadly, is that we really need an intentional design for how we're thinking about experience and how experience flows into the various decisions that we make as organizations. And I tell you that's exactly it.

When you start at this sort of experience layer and work your way backwards rather than sort of starting in the middle with, okay, well I saw that we want to increase our mammogram screenings, for example, you could throw something like that out there. And they're saying, I know what we can do.

What is the patient actually trying to do? Or what are we trying to, influence the patient to do in order to take great steps for their care? What is it that we want them to experience? And then what are the technologies that will service that? What do we want them calling us? Do we want them to engage with us digitally and just making those kinds of decisions rather than just sort of looking at each point solution or at each problem independently. So I really love this sort of intentionality in how experience can help us drive those conversations

And we need to try to avoid the trap of the point solutions. And looking for technology on an individualized basis to solve problems instead of starting with the experience. So that's a real lesson for us and for everybody. I'm sure you, if you're in healthcare, you've done this before too.

Sarah Richardson: Well, what stood out from what you've done is that we are so often asked to back into a strategy based on this whole pile of point solutions. And Dan I'd asked you though, is how do you give yourself space to extricate using your words the philosophical approach to design in mind, and building for the future five years from now will be significantly different every year because the way technology is advancing. How are you implementing that sort of ethos and perspective into the work you're doing at Hartford?

Daniel Small: Yeah, that, it's a difficult question. I think. In this particular case, and I know you're asking a broader case and we'll get to it again later when we talk about our building project, which also leads to the same question, but in this particular case, I was laying the groundwork for about 18 months before I finally was able to do the unwind, and then all the trigger.

experiential vision that we have. So it was a lot of pressing the flesh and a lot of communicating, a lot of storytelling and also some maneuvering behind the scenes to ensure that I had the ability to do it frankly. But ultimately it's a philosophy many of us have, is

Or if you're with Cerner, you're Epic first. You're Cerner first, and once you take that path, it's almost impossible to excavate yourself. On the other hand, you can do that if something better does come along, or if it turns out that Salesforce has solved the problem and AI, creates the best CRM through Salesforce ever, you can begin to sort of move those components into place.

And as long as you design it with that intention in mind, and then you really think about that strategically that's the approach that I think works in the end and that's what we've shifted to over the last couple years.

And I apologize for all the vendors out there, but I know that's your job is to expand your suite of products and services with every client. I get it.

Jill McCormick: Yeah, and I was just thinking too, and thinking of that service model that I just shared it's really about the experience, then the operations, and then the technology.

We've articulated it for the built environment for that's acute spaces. We've started to articulate it for some staff and colleagues, and we've been talking about articulating it for knowledge workers too. And so it's sort of like how do any of these decisions impact all of those? Operations and then ultimately what happens to the experience.

And so if you define the experience first, then it's easier to have those conversations because everybody has agreed to some extent that's the right vision for the experience that we're targeting.

Daniel Small: Yep. Where does that product fit within that experience that you've designed?

And that allows you to be a little bit ahead of the market sometimes. But you need to have an exit strategy so you can. Move off of that and into a more strategically interoperability integrated approach that serves the ultimate experience. And if you're not thinking about that, you're gonna end up being in a sticky situation where you're stuck with some.

Now at this point, legacy technology that is hampering your ability to move forward.

Jill McCormick: And so this is critically important, especially when you're thinking about buildings and laying out the groundwork for how buildings come together. Do you wanna give a little context of the building experience, visioning work that we embarked on together?

And I found myself in a meeting with some futurists and some architects and we're just going through a litany of different technologies, touchscreen that, waiting room this, and device that, and, just on and on. And it's wonderful stuff and I'm glad that we had the opportunity to see this.

But while we're doing that I started texting back and forth with my chief information Digital Officer, Joel Vanko. Here we go again, we're putting the cart before the horse. We're being asked to pick technologies without first envisioning what the experience that we aim to deliver is.

So, that's a challenge though, because as Sarah pointed out earlier with AI, for instance, right now, we don't know what technology will be capable of in three years. So you have to be really clear about how you're going to take again, sort of a component approach. So that things are flexible and then you can swiftly move them out as technology changes.

Jill McCormick: So as Sarah mentioned, my background is in human-centered design. I've been doing this for 20 years and was doing it, in industry and medical devices, and then for 10 years in a health system. And so there's an amazing report that you should all check out called The Role of Design in US Health Systems.

And it features 27 various health systems that have some sort of design and experience design capacity within their ecosystem. It sort of surfaces what kinds of challenges and problems they solve. So, the problem that we're trying to solve that Dan just articulated is around like, what technology is going into this new space.

So that's kind of the formula or recipe for how we do that work. So Dan was a strong champion in all of this.

This is something that he thinks about all the time. It's an interesting career path to go from marketing and really trying to understand the psychology and influence of how patients think about these challenges, what their behaviors are and into this digital role. And so just a strong person who really got it, that experience matters and that we need an approach to solving this.

How do you get the buy-in to be able to do this? And so some of my advice, if anyone's looking at, building a new building or solving any problem and putting them through this discipline and recipe is really to start small and prove the value of focusing on experience. So we had that leg to stand on.

We also had other information about our patients coming into this sprint process. As part of this work, we engaged with our stakeholders broadly. So we'd looked at not just the folks that were gonna be impacted by the new space, but we looked cross enterprise. And so talked to folks that were stakeholders.

And we did observations and all of that. And so that really helped just sort of create a wonderful context for how we would do the session, what problems were needing to be solved. And I think what was amazing in getting that buy-in and aligning those stakeholders up it was really this moment where they said, okay, well we're excited to do this for this particular building, but also let's use this as an opportunity to set the standard across the enterprise. If we use this to say, this buildings take 2, 3, 5 years to build. And so how can we get started now?

What is that experience that we're trying to deliver? How do we set the pace and vision for the organization? And so as part of the sprint methodology I'll pause there. Do you have anything to add, Dan, before I jump into like what actually happened in the sprint?

Daniel Small: Yeah, I just wanted to mention that the boldness of what we were attempting there.

one small component in a physical space of a life event that spans, months, weeks, days, hours, whatever. And you may only be in that space for a small amount of time, actually. And less time as time goes by, right? That's by design to keep people outta the hospital. So, I have this concept of the digital campus.

You need to have those API pathways and you need to ensure that the physical space can actually house the digital technology and it's all of those things. So the vision wasn't just about how to care for patients visitors and deliver optimal experiences for colleagues in this building.

It was also, what about the entire campus? What about all of our campuses over the next 10 years? And oh, by the way, how do we create a seamless experience that wraps around them using digital technology and use this opportunity to inform the investments we need to make?

we woven into it. So where there's silent voting and independent time to actually have time to think and draw what you want the future state to be, and then to pull them back in and to say, okay, now that we know what's really important and what we love about what everybody else proposed, how do we work together to then define, the future state experience.

But you know, really the work focuses around what are the moments that matter. And so for the building that we're working on here, there's, four kind of steps in this journey.

It's whatever happens before you get there. As you get there, the care experience itself, and then also what happens after the care moment and in our work. I think this is obvious and I think Dan talking about the digital campus and how this is so critical in a future state vision for an amazing built

And had seen what the future state vision is and so they were really thinking about parking, and of course they live it every day. They park on campus and they experience it. Their patients are late and they have to shift their operation to make up for the delay in care and the uncertainty that it brings for not knowing where to park.

And so parking ended up being a major theme. As you'd expect in all of this, but also what does around parking and what does that mean ?Then also setting the tone in that vision that Dan talked about too is that, they had a concept of having a digital health companion throughout your journey.

Daniel Small: Yeah. I'll start with the concept of the Russian nesting dolls that many of us played with if you're old enough as a child. There's this idea of, okay, there's pre-care and then there's rival and there's the actual in facility care, and then there's transition and aftercare. But if you double click on any one of those, you're gonna find another 10 things.

And then if you double click on any one of those 10 things, you can create 10 more journeys within that and then there's branching logic. I don't say that to overwhelm you, but just to say that. That's kind of how it works. And you really need to vision out these individual items and which is what you're seeing there.

Those thoughts and those concepts that were sort of originated independently of this process. We're embedded in the thinking in the psyche of all of the people that ended up in the next sprints and they started referencing those other sprints and those other concepts as key parts of the journeys within this latest sprint, which was incredible because you can see the culture and the thinking change when you start to look outside in and you focus on experience and outside perspectives and then to witness that happened.

by doing that, it begins to surface up the individual technical requirements necessary to then meet those experience needs. And then from there you can look at your suite of available products and applications and skill sets and services that you have, and then ask the question, do these solve the problem?

do we need to make this vision a reality. Which is compounded over time and embedded within the culture. So I'm no longer just looking, at a team screen of a bunch of Hollywood squares and then saying, well, I'll take that and I'll take this technology and I want that technology. We now have a playbook.

We now have a menu, and we now have a recipe. And so we know what to shop for and we can look in our cupboards and we can say, does this work? Or is it expired? And do I have to go find a new one? Do I not have that ingredient at all?

it allows the operational team and the clinical team to have their input and what kind of experiences they want to deliver. And so when, a perfect example of this is of course, as part of the care experience, you start to see a whiteboard, right? And how does that whiteboard work and all kinds of technologies are coming together

into this whiteboard space. Workflows that weren't integrated before, and they're starting to ask themselves the questions, which is awesome. They're probably asking these questions before, but now they have a structure to ask the these questions around how are we gonna enhance our workflows?

How are we gonna take, I love one of our colleagues, Barry Stein always says, don't improve the workflows, take the work out. And so of course that's where you start seeing automation and augmentation.

And then of course, there's tools like AI that can help us automate or can, improve the efficiencies of the workflows that exist. So it's really about what can you automate

Sarah Richardson: just throw in two what you've presented. Three of those four items. Outside of the care delivery setting, that's right.

Daniel Small: If you can help people understand, what the next step is and where they are in the journey, and then you could guide them through that, you are gonna remove the anxiety that they feel. And just by helping navigate them through that experience and removing those anxieties, you can actually move the needle on experience and improve people's lives, frankly.

And the questions that you have that are not answered and you don't know who to go to and let's be real, trying to call a healthcare system is not very easy. So, the more you can design that into your approach ahead of time. The better your experience is going to be. And it's hard, I know it. You gotta map it out.

You gotta find those moments that matter. You gotta get the answers and you gotta surface it to people at the right time in the right place, and the preference that they have for their communication for instance. But it's really key, I think, to solving the equation.

Jill McCormick: Yeah, and I just wanna highlight too, where's the patient in all of this, right?

And so just really thinking about how are you engaging them, how far from the vision is your current state and how are you engaging them and getting you there becomes a core piece. And so as Dan mentioned earlier and sort of in this last piece is, you've created the alignment, you've created the momentum, you've tested with patients, you understand the gaps, you understand what they're excited about.

We use great frameworks for that. Like I, Like I wish, I wonder to really get a sense of what's important to them and what's appealing to them in this sort of work. So now you have all of that and you've built some great momentum. How do you keep them involved in the process as well?

And then this sort of goes beyond any implementation if you're talking about digital space or you're talking about hospital. Once you do the ribbon cutting and you're in the actual hospital space, really just thinking about if I could boil it down to one question that captures did you nail it with service quality?

Sarah Richardson: What's the validation mechanism you use with your patient advocacy groups with the expectation of, we heard you, we designed this, and then it's in production, et cetera.

What's that feedback loop look like with actual patients?

Jill McCormick: Yeah, so what we do is, in the beginning part of all of this is that we use them in capturing the current state. We understand what their pain points are. Then you do these sort of design sessions. In this particular case, the building, it was confidential at the time, so we weren't able to bring patients into the actual design process, but I would've loved to have done that.

And I definitely say if you can bring those folks in early. But

And they're usually very happy to engage with us.

Jill McCormick: Exactly, and then so then you sort of bring it to them and you gauge importance of peel and reach, how easy and hard, and just work with them through every step of the process is how you just keep collecting your yeses and your validation and you build off of it.

The other thing is in the human-centered design world, a lot of it is thematic research. So building on themes that you're seeing and sort of saying, okay, well we're grounded in this particular concept, how can we improve this problem or concept and then like move the patient forward.

And one of the key pieces that how we do that is through consulting speak, but sort of importance, appeal and reach. How important are the problems that I'm solving for you? How appealing are the solutions I'm laying out for you? And then the reach is probably the most important question and it's how you ask it and how you

I'll never use it. And then they'll say, but I can see my cousin using it, or my mom using it. And I've actually followed those patients in their journey and have seen that they become the biggest advocates for the change. And that not only did they say that they wouldn't be a user, they're actually an advocate in a evangelist of the actual technology.

Sarah Richardson: How do you also manage the financial implication? So you're like, we have this beautiful outcome and it costs X or Y or Z. Bringing that back, Dan, to your board, to Joel, to others. How are you managing? This is the perfect version.

Here's how much it costs and here's how we are going to finance and even measure some of the value creation from these types of endeavors.

So on some level there's an element of shoot for the mo moon and get to orbit and ensure that you're moving in the right direction and then you're making solid progress. Right. More platitudes, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. So we wanna at least say and state what our ideal experience is.

Working within the confines of what we have. And then by the way, advocating which I do often and sharing and evangelizing that we need to make more investments through all of my leadership. And then ultimately getting as much as you possibly can to get as far as you can on that vision.

And then I'll also freely admit that. This department that I've started is only a year old and we're still staffing up, and this is the first year that we've begun working with Pixel Health. So we are still in the kind of advocate for this approach and the resources to get it done mode. And as I've mentioned, I've witnessed the culture coalesce around it and rally to it, and our leadership is now

So I'm confident that this is the right thing.

Jill McCormick: Yeah, and I just wanna add to that too, that the experienced brief that we've put together makes its way into those conversations as well. So like, I think that's the interesting culture shift is around when we are talking about investments, when we are talking about the research,

the design, the feedback makes its way into those conversations, and I think you've done an amazing job of carrying that forward.

Daniel Small: That was not always the case, right? It was just facilities discussions, IT discussions, operations. And you didn't really have this experience voice in the room that would help people understand, how far you can go and where there are trade-offs.

Helps move the organization to make the right decisions or the decisions that I perceive to be right.

Jill McCormick: And I also think your point about your team being young as well, is just sort of thinking about, you've put experience design that you've augmented your team with pixel health. Mm-hmm. But then you're also building your team of UX designers and folks that have a research and design

focus. So sort of referring back to that role of design in US health systems report that I just named here too. Like just thinking about design and experience design as a discipline, just like we think for marketing and putting that rigor and that science around how you talk about experience and weave it in.

Think about experienced designers, experienced researchers, as well as service model designers is just a tidbit of information I should share.

Sarah Richardson: I'm glad we've been able to weave in all of the questions throughout the presentation. And before we wrap up, I just wanna thank our panelists.

Again, thank you to everyone for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you at our next webinar. That's all for today.

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