Measuring Patient Experience: A RISE Brief for Ontario Health Teams

This report is a RISE brief focusing on measuring patient experience within the Ontario healthcare system, particularly for Ontario Health Teams (OHTs). It emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and improvement to achieve universal healthcare coverage. The brief outlines how measuring patient experience can identify key issues, personalize care plans, and enhance patient engagement. It discusses various methods for measuring patient experience, including surveys, interviews, and feedback mechanisms. The report also provides suggestions for using patient experience data to improve the overall health system, such as identifying common issues, promoting digital health, and building relationships with other healthcare providers. Potential outcomes of implementing these practices include identifying key areas for improvement, motivating healthcare staff, and fostering better engagement between caregivers and patients. The report also acknowledges potential challenges, such as bias in surveys and the limitations of patient knowledge, and stresses the need for careful planning and comparison of data. The ultimate goal is to improve the quality of healthcare in Ontario through effective measurement and analysis of patient experiences. The report references several key resources to support its findings.

Running head: MANAGEMENT AND EVALUATION OF QUALITY IN HEALTHCARE
RISE Brief: MEASURING PATIENT EXPERIENCE
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Introduction
The health system in Ontario believes in continuous learning and constant
improvement towards delivering the services to the individuals and community. The Ontario
Health Team (OHT) has been formulated for the development of the health system. The
OHTs main objective is to introduce the health system as the universal coverage towards the
individuals [1]. The rapid learning and continual improvement can achieve the impact of
universal coverage. This paper intends to provide a RISE brief towards the effectiveness of
measuring the patient experience.
Overview
Ontario Health Teams (OHT) would require effective measures of patient experiences
for improving along with learning rapidly. In the building block of OHT, #4 suggests that
OHT needs to measures patient experience for proactively manage the diseases and to build
effective relationships among patients and healthcare providers [2]. A major goal of the
health system of Ontario is to provide effective care to everyone. They believe in continual
learning as well as continual improvement in the development of the health system in Ontario
[12]. OHTs cannot achieve success in the deliveries of care towards the individuals or
community. Therefore, it is important to implement a model that would provide continual
support in learning, along with improvement. Measuring patient experience provides
identification of key issues that are rising within the health system of Ontario. It would result
in the personalised planning of care that would enhance their engagement towards their
healthcare providers. Healthcare as a whole is continuously evolving, and thus, OHT needs to
evolve for delivering better services. Seeking excellence in healthcare settings must include
the identification of current issues within the settings. Measuring the patient experiences
would result in the finding or identifying the key issues that may affect the system of health
in Ontario
In the OHT building blocks, the first-year expectations are to redesign the health
system for delivering effective care. The care needs the integration of coordination along with
transitions [13]. The delivery of health information towards the individuals and community is
essential for developing awareness about the health status. It would promote with the help of
virtual care services and self-management planning. With the help of measuring patient
experience, the OHTs would be able to analyse the needs along with the demand of the
individuals and the entire community. After the first year, the efficient amount of information

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would be gathered and collected. OHTs would be able to provide the highest level of quality
care integrated with effective coordination with the patients.
Patient experience
The patient experience incorporates multiple ranges of communication that patients
generate within the health care providers or health care system. The experience includes a
wide aspect of healthcare services that include treatment, diagnosis, easily accessible
information, and effective communication with the healthcare system [11]. Providing an
efficient patient experience is the major key elements in delivering higher quality medical
care. OHT would be able to learn and improve with the help of measuring patient
experiences. Measurement of patient experience is a continuous process of evaluating the
needs and demand of the patients and their family members [6]. Patient experience would
also help OHTs to formulate patient-centred care. Patient-centred care is an effective
approach that includes patient to give inputs in formulating the care by the healthcare
providers. The preferences of patients, physical comfort and emotional support would be
address in the approach of patient-centred care.
Ways to Measure Patient Experience
Patient experiences multiple dimensional elements starting from taking appointments,
waiting time and till the discharge from any healthcare settings or hospitals. Experiences of
patients or their family member often influence the satisfaction level. The combination of
patient reports and patients evaluation results in an effective tool for measuring patient
experiences. OHTs need to implement the combination of the patient report and patient
evaluation in their practice of delivering care. The patient report includes information about
the incidence, such as diagnosis or treatment. The patient evaluation includes ratings of the
experiences that he or she received from the treatment. Measuring patient experiences
involves multiple ways. OHTs can adopt the questionnaire survey in their respective clinical
settings or any other healthcare organisation. Such a survey can be done with multiple
approaches, such as SMS messages or any online surveys [7]. With the innovation in
technology, the survey can be conducted effectively. The kiosks or any handheld device may
be used for measuring the experience of patients in the real-time zone. Such daily assessment
would increase the care of patients along with their family members. Another approach
towards measuring patient experience is taking the interview or focus group methods.
However, these methods are commonly used for research. If OHTs want to conduct any

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research in analysing the experiences of patients, then the focus group method would be the
most appropriate. Another approach would be measuring feedback. The feedback includes
both compliments and complaints [8]. These feedback from patients or their family members
would draw a picture for analysing the experiences of patients. The data or information
collected from multiple sources would help OHTs to formulate any rules or policies. OHTs
would also able to learn, and the necessary improvement can be made accordingly.
In many cases, the patient experience can be considered as a proxy measure for
clinical quality [5]. Besides, improving the patient experience would also result in improving
clinical quality. The improvement in patient experience would result in positive health
outcomes. For example, effective communication between physician and patients would
impact on the health outcomes of the patients or their family members.
Using patient experience in improving the health system
In addition to using the experience of patients in building effective communication among
healthcare providers and healthcare seekers. OHTs would be able to use the information
gathered from multiple methods of patient experiences. For improving the overall health
system, OHTs may want to consider the following suggestions:
1. Identify the most common issues that have been addressed by the patients or their
family members.
2. Focus on the compliments apart from focusing only on a single parameter of
complaints. Analysing the positive aspects would help OHTs to clearly understand the
strong beneficial factors of the health system of Ontario.
3. Formulate effective disease management for letting patients and their family member
manage their health proactively.
4. OHTs can promote digital heath for improving the overall health system.
5. Formulating the training sessions for the staff or team member of the health provider
to effectively measure the patient experience.
6. Formulate a single online platform for any queries related to the services of the health
system.
7. Build a relationship with other healthcare providers for effective information on the
experiences or feedback from the patients and their family member or the whole
community.

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8. Plan the practice of measuring the patient experience in regular interval of time for the
effective health outcomes that would ultimately result in the positive health system.
Potential outcomes
After implementing the practice of measuring the patient experience, there would be
effective potentials advantages to the OHT as a whole. The experiences gathered from the
patients would provide efficient in-depth information. It would provide the key issues that
need improvement [3]. The feedback from patients such as compliments would bring positive
motivation for the front line patient care help or nursing professionals. It is a continuous and
spontaneous reporting; therefore, the OHTs can identify the specific or particular interest of
the patients [4]. There would be effective engagement between caregivers and care receivers.
This process would bring stories from multiple patients regarding their prospective. These
stories from different patients can bring wider and clear approach for enhancing the quality.
This measures of patient experiences can act as an effective tool for improving the quality in
the hospitals and other healthcare providers. The surveys that would be conducted in gaining
the experience from patients would provide feedback from a huge number of populations. It
would also generate multiple indicators that can help in developing the health system in
multiple aspects. The data collected from the online ratings can also provide measures that
may correlate with other indicators that may affect their experiences. The positive ratings can
also bring a wider prospect to build the reputation of the multiple healthcare organisations.
The outcomes vary according to the response of each patient.
One major complication in measuring patient experience includes biasness while
conducting surveys. Not every patient would provide accurate information about their
experiences while availing healthcare services [10]. Moreover, patients lack in clinical
knowledge and therefore, often unable to provide effective information regarding the
treatment [9]. Patients often give information or feedback regarding their latest desires. For
example, if the patient found the process of appointment to be easily accessible, and then the
feedback has been taken during that specific time. The patient would give feedback or
experience regarding the particular appointment process. These concerns would reduce the
reliability of patient experience. Therefore, OHTs need to plan the measurement of patient
experience with the right methods. Moreover, OHTs also need to compare the information
provided by patients with other healthcare settings or healthcare providers. The health system
of Ontario would improve with the effective measurement of the patient experience.

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Key Resources
1. Dolovich L, Oliver D, Lamarche L, Agarwal G, Carr T, Chan D, Cleghorn L, Griffith
L, Javadi D, Kastner M, Longaphy J. A protocol for a pragmatic randomized
controlled trial using the Health Teams Advancing Patient Experience: Strengthening
Quality (Health TAPESTRY) platform approach to promote person-focused primary
healthcare for older adults. Implementation Science. 2015 Dec 1;11(1):49.
Most of the healthcare systems are not designed for maintaining the health outcome
by the patients. Therefore, the person-centered or measuring patient experience would help in
formulating the effective healthcare system.
2. Manary MP, Boulding W, Staelin R, Glickman SW. The patient experience and health
outcomes. The New England journal of medicine. 2013 Jan 17.
This articles explains about the relationship between measuring patient experience
and health outcomes. The health outcomes are the reflection of the efficient quality of care.
The quality of the care can be improves by measuring the patient experience.

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