The Beryl Institute Patient Experience Conference 2011 Will Highlight How Hospitals Are Transforming Care

DALLAS (Nov. 16, 2010) -- To continue its ongoing mission to develop resources and research around the topic of improving the patient experience, The Beryl Institute is hosting its annual conference, April 13-15, 2011, in Dallas. The conference will feature presentations from healthcare leaders who are transforming the way care is managed in their organizations.

"Consumers are becoming more conscious of how healthcare is delivered as they make choices about when and where to access medical services," said Jason Wolf, executive director of The Beryl Institute. "With many healthcare providers facing financial challenges, just like other businesses, providers are trying to capture customer loyalty by deploying some of the same customer retention and recruitment strategies as other consumer-oriented businesses, which focus on improving the experience."

The Beryl Institute conference will provide attendees—including patient experience/satisfaction leaders, chief nursing officers, quality officers, service excellence leaders and others with intensive networking opportunities and invaluable breakout sessions. These sessions will offer insights into the cultural practices and organizational issues that must be addressed to effectively implement patient experience initiatives. Specific patient experience improvement success stories, how hospitals are marketing their patient experience initiatives to help connect those efforts to quality, and patient experience measurement will be addressed.

Keynote speakers for the conference will include:

Gerard van Grinsven, president and chief executive officer at Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, Detroit, Michigan, who will speak about how healthcare organizations must break old habits related to patient delivery in order to improve the overall experience.
Thomas C. Royer, M.D., chief executive officer and president of CHRISTUS Health, Dallas, Texas, who will speak about creating excellence in healthcare by building a system centered on the patient.
Kristin Baird, RN, BSN, MHA, president of the Baird Group Inc., Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, who will speak about using new information to change old ways in her session, "CSI Meets the Flintstones."

Additionally, the 2011 conference line-up gives attendees the chance to customize their conference experience with 16 breakout sessions focusing on four key areas of patient experience: Patient Experience Practices, Culture and Change, Research and Measurement, and Marketing. Healthcare executives from MD Anderson in Houston, Texas, BJC HealthCare in St. Louis, Mo., Exempla Lutheran Medical Center in Denver, Colo., Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Md., Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass., and WellSpan Health in York, Penn., and other organizations will present case studies about their journey to improve the patient experience.

"The industry is experimenting with new models that will enhance the patient experience," continued Wolf. They are exploring these concepts because it is the right thing to do for patients and because it creates a more fulfilling work environment for staff. The next year will be critical for healthcare organizations as they work on the patient experience in the face of CMS's value-based purchasing program," Wolf concluded. "It's crucial for hospitals to begin to identify and adopt strategies that can be implemented today to improve the patient experience. Our conference will provide the learning opportunities that hospital leadership needs to successfully integrate a true patient experience model."

About The Beryl Institute

The Beryl Institute serves as a professional home for stakeholders who recognize that the patient experience is an essential element in the execution and evaluation of health care performance. The Institute is committed to improving the patient experience, by serving as a reliable resource for shared information and proven practices, a dynamic incubator of leading research and new ideas and an interactive connector of effective leaders and dedicated practitioners. The Institute is uniquely positioned to develop and publicize cutting-edge concepts focused on improving the patient experience, touching thousands of healthcare executives and patients.

The Beryl Institute defines the patient experience as the sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization's culture, that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care.