Experience of Care Consultant

Sutter Health•Goleta, CA

10h•Remote

About The Position

Provide coaching and/or training to frontline staff, leaders, physicians and practices within Sutter Health's Sansum Clinic. The goal is to develop consistently excellent service and communication skills across all entity facilities' practices to increase patient satisfaction, physician satisfaction, and employee satisfaction. This position will train and promote evidence-based best practices for service behaviors and communication skills, acting as a change agent to gain commitment and elicit follow-through from coaching clients. The role involves designing and developing action plans and training resources to meet the needs of coaching clients throughout the organization. The selected candidate must reside within California’s Central Coast region, in proximity to Sansum Clinic locations in the Santa Barbara area.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Healthcare Admin, Human Resources, Communications, Behavioral Health, Psychology, Counseling, Training & Development, Organizational Leadership, or Performance Improvement, or equivalent experience.
5 years of recent relevant experience.
Knowledge of the operations of a healthcare system and/or a medical office is required.
Knowledge of ICF Coaching Core Competencies is required.
Knowledge of Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications in a Windows environment is essential.
Ability to effectively use external sources of information (like the internet, research journals, and professional affiliations) is required.
Must have verbal and interpersonal communication skills.
Must be an effective listener with an understanding of how to influence and motivate others.
Must have proficiency with inquiry-based coaching techniques.
Must be able to develop and maintain effective relationships with physicians, management, support staff, patients, and coworkers.
Proven client-customer relations skills are required.
Facilitation and presentation skills are required.
Must be able to work with people with various backgrounds and experiences.
Must have organizational, analytical, and critical thinking skills, enabling collaboration with others at all levels of the organization.
Must have the ability to effectively deal with multiple priorities in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment.
Must be able to sit for long periods of time at a computer workstation.
Must be able to stand for long periods of time while conducting training sessions.
Must be able to safely lift and carry file boxes, portable laptop and projection equipment, and other department-related equipment or materials weighing up to 30 pounds without assistance.

Nice To Haves

Reside within California’s Central Coast region, within proximity to Sansum Clinic locations (part of Sutter Health) in the Santa Barbara area.

Responsibilities

Coach frontline staff, leaders, physicians, and other healthcare professionals in evidence-based service behaviors and communication techniques for an improved patient experience and patient satisfaction with care providers.
Identify potential clinician coaching clients for coaching engagement.
Conduct clinician and patient interviews, shadow clinician-patient interactions, and observe clinician interpersonal skills and non-verbal communication to identify improvement opportunities according to evidence-based best practices.
Consult with clinicians on opportunities to incorporate evidence-based service behaviors and communication techniques into their practice approach.
Utilize an appreciative inquiry coaching model to gain commitment and elicit follow-through from clinician coaching clients, facilitating effective behavioral change in physicians and clinical staff.
In partnership with coaching clients, design and develop action plans and follow-up strategies to create accountability and support sustained behavior change.
Train evidence-based service behaviors and communication techniques in both individual and group settings.
Maintain familiarity with the latest tools and research evidence for best practices in service excellence and patient communication to enhance physician-patient communication.
Provide service excellence staff training, leader coaching, and process improvement support to improve physician and staff satisfaction with the work environment and patient satisfaction with their care experience.
Collect and review patient feedback, patient satisfaction data, and other pertinent data for each care center/practice/service area.
Conduct patient and staff rounds, shadow staff-patient interactions, and observe staff interpersonal skills and non-verbal communication to evaluate coaching needs and determine the appropriate level of coaching engagement.
Consult with care center/practice/service area leaders on identified opportunities for improvement.
Facilitate, coach, and mentor each practice in areas of development necessary to achieve the target condition.
Utilize an appreciative inquiry coaching model to gain commitment and elicit follow-through from the care center/practice/service area leader, facilitating effective behavioral change in management and staff.
Train staff and leaders on evidence-based best practices for service behaviors and communication skills.
Train care center/practice/service area management to assess/validate service behavior and communication skill competencies.
Train care center/practice/service area management to reward/recognize and coach staff to maintain accountability and continued demonstration of service behaviors.
Support care center/practice/service area teams in achieving measurable improvements in patient satisfaction with continued improvement over the long term.
Serve as a coaching resource to leaders regarding achieving service excellence and superior patient experiences.
Leverage organization resources to support development in management competencies, including basic leadership skills, crucial conversations, development of behavior standards, performance reviews and accountability, staff development, reward/recognition, process improvement skills, and office procedures.
When consultation is needed for improvement areas outside the scope of service excellence expertise, facilitate connections to appropriate internal or external resources.
Support continuous process improvement by utilizing Lean management and process improvement methodologies where appropriate and aligning service behavior interventions with clinical and process initiatives.
Effectively lead process change to eliminate waste and create efficient operational flow, utilizing rapid cycle improvement planning to execute plan, do, study, act initiatives.
Design and develop action plans, accountability resources, and training resources for effective deployment throughout the organization.
Maintain ongoing coaching follow-up for the duration of the action plan until the target state is achieved and throughout a maintenance period when sustainment is validated.
Act as a change agent to enhance culture and instill a service ethic to change long-standing behaviors of frontline workers, management, and physicians, facilitating effective behavioral change.
Ensure exceptional service on an ongoing basis via an understanding of concrete behaviors required to achieve higher patient satisfaction levels for physicians, staff, and management.
Integrate lessons learned from patient feedback, patient family advisors, staff, leadership, and associates to positively impact the organizational service and operational excellence culture.
Create recommendations to prioritize care centers/practices/service areas for engagement in service excellence initiatives.
Develop programs and facilitate clinician training opportunities.
Participate in the regional behavioral interviewing team to assess clinician candidates’ service behavior aptitude prior to hiring.
Participate in new clinician on-boarding.
Oversee mystery shopping activities to ensure process improvements are consistently executed with every patient every time.
Measure outcomes and provide feedback to practice/care center management.
Round in all areas to offer “fresh eyes” and secret shop to provide feedback to leaders on service performance.
Oversee patient story collection and sharing to continually encourage a patient-centric organizational culture.
Establish service behavior and communication competency assessments in alignment with annual basic skills assessments.
Establish continuity of service behaviors and accountability between staff and the patient service center.
Create an excellent patient experience across the full continuum of care.
Regularly communicate with and provide leadership information associated with strategies of patient satisfaction and ongoing service excellence activities/initiatives.
Conduct one-on-one or group setting trainings to educate care providers and leaders about the standard Sutter Health patient satisfaction measurement tools and metrics, and industry standards and trends.
Serve as a super user for patient satisfaction vendor’s tools and other quality tools, initiating and running reports.
Conduct trainings to train care center/practice/service area leaders in the patient satisfaction vendor’s available measurement, reporting, and process improvement tools.
Interpret patient satisfaction data and mentor leaders and service excellence champions in data interpretation to identify opportunities and improvement trends.
Work with patient family advisors to incorporate patient feedback into process improvement efforts.
Incorporate trends in patient complaints in communication of patient feedback to management/leadership.
Provide written monthly reports to leadership regarding current coaching activities and progress for each practice in the service excellence initiative, including current outcome measures.