Lessons Learned From “Outside the Patient’s Door” This Season

(12/6/2021)

On the debut season of “Outside the Patient’s Door,” we talked with some of healthcare’s top innovators to hear how they are tackling the complex problems many leaders and the healthcare industry as a whole face today. Since we’ve uncovered a myriad of great ideas and strategies, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on what our guests shared with us in season one. Here are the highlights:

Managing the skills gap and labor shortage
Healthcare institutions are employing novel recruitment techniques to attract candidates and developing efficient training programs to properly onboard new personnel to meet the demands of a rapidly increasing sector. In the first episode, Medxcel’s VP of Operations discusses these different recruitment and development techniques.
As you’ll learn, it all comes down to education and making known what opportunities are available in the marketplace. There is a misnomer that a four-year degree is required for a successful career. Healthcare facilities have to push the message that trade school is also a viable option. Additionally, facilities personnel should address the special problems in hospital settings as they build relationships with trade schools and high schools to promote the benefits of skilled jobs such as electricians or maintenance mechanics inside healthcare facilities.
Listen to the whole conversation here.
Providing top-notch care with healthcare tech
During the COVID-19 pandemic, technology played a critical role in healthcare. Many patients opted for telehealth to digitally communicate with healthcare providers as a result of social distancing and stay-at-home orders around the country. Medxcel associates turned to modern technology solutions to continue supporting facilities management. Josh Sol, Administrative Director of Innovation and Ambulatory Clinical Systems at Houston Methodist, and Mike Wood, VP of Planning, Design and Construction at Medxcel, discussed how they are innovating healthcare technology to improve how we provide top-notch care.
At Medxcel, we’re excited about what we are doing with programs like Alexa and AWS and are looking to the future of healthcare technology to develop better patient and provider experiences. In an effort to continue excellent care, facilities have focused on developing caregiver engagement. Clinical outcomes, patient experience and their impact on quality has all had a direct correlation. Facilities’ number-one strategic investment should be caregiver engagement, which has led to better outcomes in the clinical setting, financial setting and overall patient experience.
For more on this topic, listen to the entire episode here.
Ensuring employees feel seen and valued
This season of the podcast, one of the primary themes across multiple episodes was demonstrating to employees that they are important and valued. For example, the pandemic pushed healthcare executives to be more visible, encouraging and compassionate to the front line. This led to impressive results in physician engagement – a company-wide survey revealed that physician engagement ratings in the midst of a pandemic were in fact the best they had ever been.
Elsewhere, a successful part of cultivating employee engagement is fostering mentorship within a company culture. Results of effective mentorship programs have shown that mentors get as much out of the relationships as the mentees, and the desire for long term relationships from both parties is important in developing valuable mentor-mentee relationships and promoting employee engagement.
At the leadership level, podcast guests also discussed how important it is to create an environment that is safe to fail, allowing for many great ideas to be tested quickly to foster rapid growth. By creating an environment for leadership staff to say things safely, new and innovative ideas can effectively be tested for success. In the same token is a reminder to show gratitude to all staff for all their hard work, day in and day out. Gratitude, as a building block of appreciation, reminds employees that they are valued and leads to lower levels of burnout.
Explore more about encouraging and supporting your staff in these episodes:

As the season draws to a close, we can see that innovation is everywhere in healthcare, and the pandemic pushed leaders to creative solutions in the healthcare space. Here at Medxcel, we want all healthcare workers to feel seen, appreciated and fulfilled in their careers as they deliver top-tier care to patients.
If you missed an episode or are interested in learning more about one of the topics discussed, visit our podcast at outsidethepatientsdoor.com or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts. Don’t worry, season two will be live shortly!
Have any questions for us? Contact us at info@medxcel.com or 855-633-9235.