Humanizing Healthcare

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Aug 2026

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Humanizing Healthcare is dedicated to sharing insights and best practices to make healthcare more human and fulfilling for all. With healthcare innovators and thought-leaders, we discuss how to better support everyone in the healthcare ecosystem: clinicians, patients, families, and the broader care team, to deliver experiences and outcomes that inspire lasting relationships.

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September 24, 202643 min

Turning Patient Experience Into Meaningful Change

In this episode of Humanizing Healthcare , Chris Malone talks with Steve Meth, Vice President and Chief Patient Experience Officer at Johns Hopkins Medicine , about how healthcare organizations can listen more effectively to patients and families and turn those insights into meaningful improvements in care. Steve’s path to patient experience began with seeing firsthand what can happen when communication, coordination and trust break down. Those experiences ultimately led him from law into healthcare, where he has spent his career working to prevent harm and strengthen connections among patients, families and clinicians. Steve shares how Johns Hopkins Medicine is taking a long-term approach to patient experience, including simulation-based learning that helps clinicians practice difficult patient encounters, virtual patient and family advisors who broaden the voices represented in improvement efforts, and post-discharge calls that help identify potential care issues while bringing patients’ actual voices into the organization. The conversation also explores how patient experience, patient safety and employee engagement reinforce one another; how technology can support stronger relationships; and why sustainable improvement requires patience, data, listening and a willingness to keep learning. Key Takeaways 02:49 How Steve Meth Found His Path Into Patient Experience 06:43 Why Sustainable Change Requires Long-Term Thinking 10:52 Building a Long-Term Patient Experience Strategy at Johns Hopkins 13:25 Why Clinicians Need Coaches, Too 18:18 Expanding Who Gets Heard Through Patient and Family Advisors 20:26 Using AI to Turn Patient Feedback Into Action 20:52 The Power of Calling Patients After Discharge 21:25 Why Hearing the Patient’s Actual Voice Matters 22:28 How Post-Discharge Calls Are Improving Care and Preventing Harm 24:26 Finding New Ways to Listen and Respond to Patients 26:01 How Peer-to-Peer Support Helps Patients and Families 27:10 Building Relationships Beyond the Hospital Stay 31:05 Balancing Technology With Human Connection 34:17 Building Leadership Support for Long-Term Change 39:35 Creating a Consistent Experience Across a Health System 42:23 Why Yesterday’s Success May Not Be Enough for Tomorrow Additional Resources Additional Resources Steve Meth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/empathy-forward/ Johns Hopkins Medicine: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ PRC: https://www.prcexcellence.com/ Fidelum Health: https://fidelumhealth.com/ Unlock the power of The HUMAN Remedy™ insights model: https://fidelumhealth.com/services/

August 27, 202634 min

The Power of Relationships in Humanizing Healthcare

In this episode of Humanizing Healthcare , we sit down with Michelle Brady, Director of Patient Experience and Relationship-Based Care at MyMichigan Health , to explore why strong relationships are at the heart of great healthcare experiences. A registered nurse with more than three decades of healthcare experience, Michelle brings a clinician’s perspective to patient experience leadership. She explains MyMichigan Health’s relationship-based care model, which starts with caring for yourself, extends to relationships with colleagues, and ultimately strengthens relationships with patients, families, and the communities healthcare organizations serve. In this conversation, Michelle shares practical ways caregivers can create meaningful human connections without adding more work or requiring more time. She explains why “words matter,” how eye contact and simply sitting beside a patient can build trust in seconds, and why healthcare should reconsider language such as “frontline workers” and “boots on the ground.” She also discusses how patient stories and Patient and Family Advisory Councils can uncover insights that survey scores alone may miss. Michelle also offers a thoughtful perspective on artificial intelligence and healthcare technology. Rather than allowing technology to further separate caregivers from patients, she believes organizations should use it to reduce administrative burdens and give caregivers more time for human connection. At MyMichigan Health, ambient listening technology is already helping clinicians spend less time documenting and more time looking at and talking with their patients. If you lead patient experience, care for patients directly, or are working to build a more human-centered healthcare culture, this conversation offers practical ideas for making relationships part of how care is delivered every day. Key Takeaways 02:21 How Michelle Brady Found Her Calling in Nursing 04:16 How 37 Years in Healthcare Shaped Her Approach to Patient Experience 05:23 The Four Relationships at the Heart of Relationship-Based Care 08:58 Why Better Patient Experience Doesn't Always Require More Time 12:47 Why Words Matter—and Language Healthcare Should Reconsider 15:23 Listening Beyond Patient Experience Survey Scores 18:50 What Patient and Family Advisory Councils Can Teach Healthcare Leaders 20:28 Why Patient Experience Shouldn't Feel Like “One More Thing” 22:10 Connecting Caregivers With Their Purpose—and Recognizing What They Do Right 23:57 Using AI to Create More Time for Human Connection 26:29 Why Human Connection Can't Be Treated as an Extra 28:20 Making Human Connection Part of Daily Healthcare Operations 29:54 Connecting Employee Engagement With Patient Experience 31:54 Where AI Helps—and Where Patients Still Need a Human Being 32:47 Why Healthcare Is Never Routine for the Patient and Family Additional Resources Michelle Brady on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-brady-mshal-bsn-rn-cpxp-2aaa32a9/ Learn more about Fidelum Health: https://fidelumhealth.com/ PRC on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/prcexcellence/

July 30, 202635 min

The Ripple Effect & Restoring Humanity in Healthcare

In this episode of Humanizing Healthcare , we sit down with Dr. Todd Otten —board-certified family physician, co-author of Ripple of Change , and Executive Producer of the new documentary Suck It Up, Buttercup: Trust & Betrayal – Healthcare in America —to explore why so many clinicians have become disillusioned with modern medicine and what it will take to restore trust across the healthcare system. Key Takeaways 03:22 How Dr. Todd Otten Found His Path Into Medicine 04:40 How Physician Burnout Changed His Career and Mission 06:47 The Personal “Ripple” That Led Him Into Healthcare Advocacy 09:48 The Story Behind the Title Suck It Up, Buttercup 13:19 How Learned Helplessness Takes Hold in Healthcare 14:57 Why Burnout Reflects a Dysfunctional Healthcare System 17:12 How Ambient AI Scribes Could Help—or Add More Pressure 18:37 Why Time and Trust Are Essential to the Clinician-Patient Relationship 20:46 How Direct Primary Care Rebuilds Access, Relationships, and Joy in Practice 23:12 The Physician Mental Health and Suicide Crisis 26:35 Healthcare Organizations That Are Putting People and Well-Being First 28:16 How to Watch and Support Suck It Up, Buttercup 30:19 How Impact Networks Can Break Down Healthcare Silos 31:28 The One Ripple of Change Everyone Can Start Tomorrow 32:31 Maya Angelou, Authenticity, and How Patients Remember Their Care Additional Resources Buttercup: Trust & Betrayal – Healthcare in America (Documentary): https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-suck-it-up-buttercup-documentary Make a donation in any amount to the GoFundMe campaign and you'll receive an access code to view the full documentary online.

June 25, 202635 min

Reducing Friction in Healthcare Experiences I Jennifer Carron

In this episode, we talk with Jennifer Carron, Patient Experience Officer at BJC HealthCare about reveals how one of the Midwest's largest health systems is rethinking care from the ground up. Jennifer Carron didn't plan a career in healthcare — she fought her way into it as a mother sitting beside her critically ill son's hospital bed, watching what real relationship-centered care looked like for the first time. Today she leads patient experience across BJC Healthcare's 24-hospital, $11-billion system, and she joins Chris Malone to share the frameworks that are actually moving the needle. Episode Description This conversation covers the full spectrum of modern patient experience strategy. Jen explains why healthcare's biggest gap isn't clinical quality — it's communication, visibility, and friction reduction. She walks through BJC's Disney-inspired Emergency Department wait experience design, where EMR-automated text updates guide patients through every step of their visit without adding a single task to clinical staff. She makes a sharp distinction between real-time in-visit feedback and post-discharge surveys, describes an EMR-driven risk model that predicts poor patient experiences before they happen, and explains why transition of care remains the single greatest source of patient leakage. On AI, she urges both optimism and caution: generative AI can act as a digital concierge for complex care navigation, but it cannot yet reliably detect fear, hesitation, or confusion the way an experienced caregiver can. She closes with the business case every PX leader needs: experience strategy drives retention, activation, and growth — and AI is already synthesizing publicly reported data to tell patients which health system to choose. Key Takeaways 02:42 Jen's personal story: critically ill son and the physician who changed everything 07:07 BJC Healthcare: scale, markets, and mission 08:07 Why healthcare still lags behind other service industries 09:30 Designing the Emergency Department wait experience — lessons from Disney 11:35 EMR automation and real-time patient text updates in the ED 12:41 Real-time in-visit feedback vs. post-discharge surveys 14:50 Consistency across 44,000 staff and 60 caregiver touchpoints 17:02 Friction vs. effort and why transition of care drives patient leakage 19:43 Healthcare as relationship, not transaction — the cost of patients who go nowhere 20:06 Generative AI as digital concierge — promise and caution 23:00 How AI is reshaping how patients shop for healthcare organizations 24:45 Making the business case for patient experience to finance and operations 27:54 Patient Family Advisory Councils and co-design at BJC 30:50 Implementing real-time feedback: EMR risk prediction and staff buy-in 33:47 What patients would notice first in a truly patient-centered system 34:34 Jen's favorite quote: every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets Additional Resources Jennifer Carron LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jen-carron/ BJC Healthcare: https://www.bjc.org Fidelum Health: https://fidelumhealth.com/ Fidelum Health LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fidelum-health/

May 28, 202641 min

The Future of Human Experience in Healthcare | Jason Wolf

In this episode of Humanizing Healthcare, we sit down with Jason Wolf, President and CEO of the Beryl Institute, to mark three years of the podcast and take stock of where the patient experience movement stands. Jason founded the Beryl Institute in 2010 with a simple belief: that if healthcare leaders had a safe, neutral space to share ideas honestly, the whole field would get better. Sixteen years and 85,000 engaged members across 85 countries later, that bet has paid off. In this conversation, he breaks down how the definition of "experience" has evolved from patient satisfaction scores to a full human experience framework, one that includes patients, families, workforce, and community. He talks about why culture was always at the heart of that definition, what practical signs tell you an organization is genuinely human-centered, and why leaders still playing Whac-A-Mole with their metrics are building on shaky ground. He also makes the case for injecting experience education into medical schools before clinicians ever set foot on a unit, and what we lose when we wait until they're already in the building. If you lead, manage, or influence care delivery at any level, this conversation gives you the frameworks and the language to make the case for experience at the top of your organization. 🎧 Take a listen. Takeaways 03:55 How Jason Wolf Found His Path Into Healthcare 08:55 How the Definition of Patient Experience Has Evolved Over 16 Years 12:55 How to Make the Case for Human Experience to a CEO in 60 Seconds 16:55 Why Caring for Your Workforce Is Caring for Your Patients 19:55 Why Experience Needs to Be Taught in Medical Schools 23:45 What a Truly Human-Centered Culture Looks Like in Practice 26:35 What Surveys and Scores Are Actually For 30:25 Why Every Role in the Building Shapes the Patient Experience 37:55 What the US Can Learn From Countries Without CAHPS 39:55 Anne Frank and Why You Don't Have to Wait to Change Healthcare Jason Wolf LinkedIn The Beryl Institute Story Submission Link for New Book Fidelum Health LinkedIn Page Unlock the power of our HUMAN Brand™ insights model

April 30, 202625 min

Humanizing Healthcare at Scale at CommonSpirit Health | Camille Haycock

In this episode of Humanizing Healthcare, we speak with Camille Haycock— Senior Vice President and Chief Patient Experience Officer at CommonSpirit Health — about what it actually takes to embed human kindness into the operational, cultural, and clinical fabric of a national health system. CommonSpirit spans hospitals, clinics, and community care settings across more than two dozen states. Camille leads the enterprise-wide effort to make patient experience consistent, measurable, and mission-driven at that scale — not as a standalone initiative, but as an organizational imperative that lives at the board level alongside quality, safety, and financial performance. She talks about why patient experience and quality can never be treated as separate workstreams, how her team turns 1,600 daily patient comments into actionable insight, and why the tactics for improving experience have to be tailored to each care setting — from inpatient units to emergency department hallways where patients are boarding for hours. She also shares what it looks like to teach human kindness systematically, and why the caregivers who drove 90 miles to a patient's funeral didn't do it because of a program. If you want to understand how compassionate care gets operationalized across a complex system — and what leadership really looks like when kindness is the strategy — this is the episode. 🎧 Take a listen. Key Takeaways: 03:00 Camille's path from clinical nursing to enterprise patient experience leadership 04:20 Why human kindness is embedded in CommonSpirit's organizational intent 05:50 Why patient experience and quality and safety cannot be separated 07:15 How CommonSpirit customizes experience improvement across five distinct care settings 08:30 Turning 1,600 daily patient comments into insight with AI and quantitative data 10:20 The Emmanuel Hospital story: what human kindness looks like in the final 19 days 12:25 How retreats, rounding, and relational training support frontline caregivers 15:05 What clinical background gives a patient experience leader that can't be taught from the outside 17:20 Influence without authority: the leadership skills that matter most in this role 19:10 Building a shared culture of human kindness across a highly decentralized organization 22:00 Patient throughput and patient experience 24:25 Maya Angelou and why how you make people feel is the only thing that lasts Additional Resources Camille Haycock LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camille-haycock/ CommonSpirit Health: https://www.commonspirit.org/ #HumanizingHealthcare #PatientExperience #CompassionateCare

March 31, 202628 min

What Healthcare Leaders Miss When They've Never Been the Patient | Stephanie Abbott

In this episode of Humanizing Healthcare, we speak with Stephanie Abbott — author, speaker, and former Chief Experience Officer — about what healthcare leaders miss when they've only ever seen the system from the inside. Stephanie spent years leading patient experience strategy at major health systems, including Adventist Health. She understood patient experience intellectually. Then she became a cancer patient — and realized how much she didn't know. She shares what it felt like to spend 63 days not knowing if she would survive, and 83 days waiting to start treatment. She explains why those gaps weren't failures of compassion — they were failures of design. And why fixing them requires more than launching a new PX program. This conversation gets into the difference between measuring satisfaction and understanding trust, why employee experience and patient experience can't be separated, and what it actually takes for leaders to build systems where compassion is sustainable — not just expected. If you want to understand what humanizing healthcare really demands of its leaders, this is the episode. 🎧 Take a listen. Key Takeaways 02:50 Stephanie's path from healthcare operations to patient experience leadership 04:15 What becoming a cancer patient revealed that years of executive experience didn't 05:55 The 63 days, the 83 days, and what they say about system design 08:45 The difference between launching PX programs and actually transforming culture 12:45 Why employee experience sets the ceiling for patient experience 10:05 How leaders should be interpreting experience data and metrics 17:10 What healthcare needs to look like in the next 5–10 years 24:45 Stephanie's book: Buried or Planted Additional Resources Stephanie's book: Buried or Planted Additional Resources: Stephanie Abbott's book — Buried or Planted: https://www.amazon.com/Buried-Planted-Insights-Healthcare-Executives/dp/B0D4Q9QM78 Stephanie Abbott's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-s-abbott/ hxology: https://www.hxology.com/ Story Submission Link for New Book: https://forms.gle/32juxZ7aYFSuugBi7 Fidelum Health LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fidelum-health/ Planetree LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/planetree/ ---- Unlock the power of our HUMAN Brand™ insights model for enhanced patient, team member, and care provider experiences: https://fidelumhealth.com/ Learn how Planetree can help your organization deliver person-centered care at: https://www.planetree.org/

March 5, 202639 min

Adopting Patient-Centered Outcome Measures with ICHOM CEO Jennifer Bright

In this episode of Humanizing Healthcare , we speak with Jennifer Bright, CEO of International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM), about what healthcare value really means and confront a question that challenges how most systems operate: Are we measuring what actually helps patients get better, or just what’s easy to count? Healthcare has become very good at tracking processes. But as Jennifer explains, many of the things we label as “outcomes” are actually tasks we do to or for patients. Screenings, follow-ups, time-to-needle. Important, yes. But they’re not results. Jennifer shares how ICHOM works with health systems around the world to define and use patient-centered outcome measures that reflect real results. She explains why survival alone does not tell the full story, why mental health and functional recovery matter, and why value must be defined by improvement in people’s lives. If we’re serious about humanizing healthcare, value has to mean improvement in people’s lives. This conversation pushes us to live up to that standard. 🎧 Take a listen. Key Takeaways Introduction (00:00) Jennifer’s personal journey into patient advocacy (02:43) From lived experience to healthcare system reform (06:27) What ICHOM does and how it was founded (09:04) Why measuring patient outcomes took so long (12:35) What measuring outcomes looks like in practice (19:04) Misconceptions about outcomes and what patients value (26:16) Additional Resources ICHOM website: https://www.ichom.org/ ICHOM LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/international-consortium-for-health-outcomes-measurement-ichom-/ Jennifer Bright’s LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbrightmhs/ ---- Story Submission Link for New Book: https://forms.gle/32juxZ7aYFSuugBi7 Fidelum Health LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fidelum-health/ Planetree LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/planetree/ ---- Unlock the power of our HUMAN Brand™ insights model for enhanced patient, team member, and care provider experiences: https://fidelumhealth.com/ Learn how Planetree can help your organization deliver person-centered care at: https://www.planetree.org/

February 3, 202634 min

Delivering Person-Centered Care at Pacifica Salud w/ Rafael Cohen

We are pleased to share a new episode of Humanizing Healthcare featuring Rafael Cohen, Chief Executive Officer at Pacifica Salud Hospitals. In this conversation, Rafael shares how Pacifica Salud has built a culture of person-centered care rooted in leadership, dignity, and humanity, even in the most complex and high-pressure moments. From rethinking hospital environments to making courageous policy decisions during COVID-19, Rafael offers real-world examples of what it looks like when healthcare organizations put people first, not just in principle, but in practice. Together, we explore how values-driven leadership shapes patient experience, supports care teams, and leads to better outcomes for everyone involved. 🎧 Hit play to hear how leadership choices can transform care, especially when it matters most. Key Takeaways Introduction (00:00) Why Person-Centered Care Matters (02:05) Designing Healing Environments for Dignity (08:55) Policy Decisions That Changed Outcomes (11:45) Balancing Care, Community, and Global Patients (15:05) When Crisis Reveals Culture (23:20) Advice for Leaders: Humanity First (32:35) Additional Resources Guest: Rafael Cohen’s LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafael-cohen-1926901b/ — Story Submission Link for New Book: https://forms.gle/32juxZ7aYFSuugBi7 Fidelum Health LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fidelum-health/ Planetree LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/planetree/ — Unlock the power of our HUMAN Brand™ insights model for enhanced patient, team member, and care provider experiences: https://fidelumhealth.com/ Learn how Planetree can help your organization deliver person-centered care at: https://www.planetree.org/

December 30, 202538 min

Patient Experience Agility: Preparing for Disruption & Change w/ Dwight McBee

Dwight McBee is back for round two on the Humanizing Healthcare podcast, and we can assure you that you'll want to hear what he’s been up to. As Chief Experience Officer at RWJBarnabas Health, Dwight is leading some seriously bold work around making care more compassionate, more responsive, and more human. We discuss how he’s helping an entire health system listen in real time, how he views AI as a tool, and why the small, everyday moments are often the ones that matter most. Dwight shares the strategies that his team is using to make change last, why flashy new initiatives can be a trap, and how storytelling is one of the most powerful tools in a leader’s toolkit. 🎧 Hit play and get inspired by a leader who is living it. Key Takeaways Introduction (00:00) Dwight Mcbee's journey into healthcare (03:27) Technology and listening in healthcare (10:34) Sustaining patient experience initiatives (16:39) Magnifying the mundane (19:51) Balancing patient and provider experience (22:04) Future of the chief experience officer role (24:48) Advice for aspiring leaders (28:38) Additional Resources Dwight McBee’s LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwmcbee/ —- Story Submission Link for New Book: https://forms.gle/32juxZ7aYFSuugBi7 Fidelum Health LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fidelum-health/ Planetree LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/planetree/ ---- Unlock the power of our HUMAN Brand™ insights model for enhanced patient, team member, and care provider experiences: https://fidelumhealth.com/ Learn how Planetree can help your organization deliver person-centered care at: https://www.planetree.org/