We Are Not THERE Yet! Why the Journey for Experience Excellence Must Persist

I am concerned, that many in healthcare think they have gotten to a “THERE” in experience excellence. That the survey scores they received are good enough, that the outcomes they are achieving reflect what they sought to accomplish. And with this in the face of today’s tumultuous healthcare landscape, decisions are being made to sustain efforts at best and in more cases now to reduce investment with the belief that things are ok. Now is NOT the time to cut short our efforts for experience excellence, or to believe there is a “there” to which we have arrived. It must be a journey of purpose, driven by an unwavering commitment to how each of our healthcare organizations chooses to show up each day, through its culture and the people that deliver on its promise. Now is not the time to believe we’ve made it. This may seem like an interesting declaration from someone who fought for these ideas in my own days in healthcare leadership and then turned to try and expand this conversation globally for the last 15 years. I can say even with all that we have done together, through the experience community and beyond, there is still much more to do. Are we in a better place then we have ever been on the experience journey? Yes, we are. And at the same time new people and organizations are discovering this work for the first time in places all around the world or bringing innovations and ideas to the fore that will only help us care for one another a little better each day. So, this may be the tension I hope we can all hold in suggesting “We are NOT there yet!”. For as much as we have done to succeed, there is so much more to learn and give.