NGPX is one of my favorite conferences of the year, and not just because it takes place in Palm Springs. Events like NGPX, CHIME, The Beryl Institute’s Elevate PX, and SHSMD bring together groups of people in similar roles, with similar missions. For a vendor like Gozio it means we can focus on having meaningful conversations because the group of attendees is a little smaller and those conversations can focus on the one or two things most important to those people. An event like HLTH is fun in its own way, but you feel like you are being pulled in a lot of different directions.
I also find that a conference designed for a smaller audience around a particular focus has fewer sessions that are more substantive. That is certainly true for NGPX. I have pages of notes from the sessions on things I wanted to remember. There was so much good content and so many great conversations. I can’t share everything here, but I can share some highlights.
- The workforce crisis is still a crisis for many organizations. This was a hot topic at NGPX with a number of sessions on or related to employee experience. A couple things that stood out to me were:
- People don’t want platitudes and pizza parties. They want real solutions. Nurses want more nurses. And when they say, “what we need is more nurses” and instead they get a pizza party, it just makes things worse not better.
- All people want to be seen and heard. They want to feel appreciated by their leaders. If that means that leaders need to get in the trenches and work shoulder to shoulder with the teams then that is what they should do.
- Healthcare jobs are hard and stressful. People do it because they know it matters. Being part of a mission and having a sense of belonging go a long way to improving morale. People need to belong.
- Use your patient experience knowledge and tools to support staff. There were a couple of sessions that talked about leveraging the same techniques, tools and technology to support staff that you have used to engage patients. I really liked what one presenter had to say about their approach which is to focus both on everyone they serve and everyone who serves. And just like they work to remove barriers that patients face in getting care, they are working to remove barriers that people face in getting a job there. In a panel the next day, a group of healthcare and health IT leaders talked above leveraging some of the same technologies used for patient engagement to engage employees. We know that a mobile app that brings together all the patient-facing tools into one place is effective. Do the same for staff.
- Tight margins shouldn’t be an excuse to stand still. In a session presented by Huron Consulting, there was a focus on tight margins and the challenges that presents to healthcare organizations. The speaker noted that we’ve cut all we can cut. Now it’s time to focus on growth. I loved the sentiment because I read a report recently that showed that organizations that invest in technology to optimize efficiency and address their goals weather financial challenges better than those that don’t.
- Be honest about the role of ROI. I have been in several sessions and focus groups this year talking about patient engagement and ROI. To sum up what a handful of people had to say at NGPX: It’s not always easy to track the hard ROI on patient engagement. Most believe there is one and that it will reveal itself over time but sometimes you do things because it is the right thing to do and it helps avoid suffering. Sometimes you just have to take a risk on something you believe is a good idea.
Needless to say, I learned a lot at NGPX. If you are a patient experience leader and you have never been, I’d encourage you to join us all next year.