Vitals & Voices
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Each episode, we bring you real conversations with the voices behind the care — from medical experts and wellness champions to community leaders and patients — sharing insights, stories, and tips to help you live your healthiest life.
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Vitals & Voices
Commit to Sit: Small Moments, Big Impact
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In this episode of Vitals & Voices, we sit down with Mike Dowling, Chief Experience Officer at Lexington Regional Health Center, to discuss a simple idea that is transforming the patient experience: Commit to Sit. While it may sound straightforward, this initiative is built around a powerful concept. Taking a moment to sit down with patients can help them feel heard, respected, and more connected to their care team.
Mike shares why patient experience is about much more than surveys and scores. It's about building trust, making meaningful connections, listening without rushing, and ensuring patients and their families feel supported throughout their healthcare journey. He explains how something as simple as pulling up a chair can encourage patients to ask questions, share concerns, and become more engaged in their care.
The conversation also highlights what makes healthcare at LRHC unique, from compassionate staff and community connections to a culture that encourages caregivers to slow down, listen, and focus on the people behind every patient room number.
What You'll Learn in This Episode:
- What patient experience really means beyond surveys and satisfaction scores
- How the Commit to Sit initiative helps patients feel heard and respected
- Why sitting down can improve communication and encourage questions
- How small acts of kindness can have a lasting impact on care outcomes
- What makes rural healthcare and community connections so valuable
- How LRHC gathers patient feedback and uses it to improve care
- Why slowing down and connecting with patients matters more than ever
Why This Episode Matters:
Healthcare can often feel rushed and overwhelming. But as Mike explains, some of the most meaningful moments happen when caregivers slow down, listen, and create space for conversation. Patients who feel heard are more likely to ask questions, share concerns, and participate in their care.
Whether you're a patient, family member, healthcare professional, or community member, this episode serves as a reminder that exceptional care isn't always found in the biggest moments. Sometimes it's as simple as pulling up a chair and taking the time to connect.
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Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Vitals and Voices. Today we're talking about something you probably never expected to hear on a healthcare podcast: a chair. That's right, a simple chair. What if I told you that one small action, one simple choice to sit down could help patients feel more heard, more comfortable, and even more connected to their care team? How can something so simple have such a big impact on patient experience? Joining me today is Mike Dowling. He is our Chief Experience Officer here at Lexington Regional Health Center. He is going to talk about our new commit to sit initiative and how those small moments of connection are helping create exceptional care for our patients. Mike, thanks for being here.
SPEAKER_01Hey, thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00I'm so excited about this initiative, but maybe to explain your role, Mike, or overall patient experience, what do you think when people hear the term patient experience that they think about?
SPEAKER_01Well, Brenna, a lot of people will stop and they'll think about, you know, hey, I get this survey every time I go to uh Casey's or I go to a restaurant or something like that. And and truthfully, yeah, we do do surveys, but it's it's not about the survey. It's what patient experience is truly about is making that connection with people, letting people know that they are cared about, they're loved when they come to our hospital. It's it's just that true commitment that um really sets us apart from anyone else. So we do look at survey results, uh, but we look at that to see where we can make corrections and and better our services so the public is um more happy and more confident in what we do.
SPEAKER_00I love that. So one of the small things, what would you say I guess is one of the small things that makes such a big difference to patients? What do what do we hear?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, we actually um sit down with our patients and we encourage our staff to kind of slow down a little bit during that process, sit down with that patient and just really connect with them, you know, ask them or make eye contact with the person, ask them to um use the patient by or address the patient by their name, um, get to know their family, include the family in that conversation, and just make sure that when we're providing that care, particularly with our doctors or our providers, that everyone in the room is well aware of what's going on and can ask questions openly and freely. Um, you know, studies have shown that by sitting down with that patient, um, it decreases chances of falls in the room by 33%. It increases the patient's um satisfaction of uh of the hospital or that particular hospital. And if they would go out and recommend our facility to other people by over 13%. So it's huge numbers. And it's just a simple act of sitting down one-on-one, connecting with that patient, finding out what they like to do and what they're scared of, how home life is gonna be when they get home, all those things that, you know, maybe we we're gonna learn when they get home that that they don't have access to transportation so we can address those issues, or maybe uh they don't have access to getting medications, so we can line up with the pharmacy here in Lexington or wherever they're at to have um medications delivered to them. It's just those simple things that that really set us apart from uh from anywhere else.
SPEAKER_00And you know, I mean, Justin, you're talking healthcare is just so complicated. And if you're not, I mean, even for us being in the healthcare field, if this is your first time in the hospital or things like this, you're you're gonna have questions. It's going to be confusing. And that's where our team comes in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. You know, um, studies have shown that a doctor will go in and they'll stand over a patient. And, you know, the patient, you'll you'll leave and the patient says, Oh, they sat there with for me with, or stay stood there with me for one minute or business with me for one minute. But if we actually have the physician or the provider sit down, they'll they'll uh double that time, triple that time, saying he spent five, 10 minutes with me. And you know, I was able to talk to him about the things that I was worried about or or additional things that he needed to address or she needed to address while they were they were there within the room.
SPEAKER_00So overall, I mean the patients just feel more comfortable with it. They're asking more questions because of it.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it's it's just incredible what what this this project does and this initiative that we're doing here in our hospital. And and we're gonna see even more happy people from this. Um, you know, our patients that they'll say great comments about what our staff's doing, but even more comments I'm hearing now that they're starting to sit and our doctors and providers are starting to sit down with them.
SPEAKER_00Mike, can you show us a chair? I know we had you bring it with you today, and I think maybe we can hold it right up here in the middle. So any of you who are joining in via online, um, this is one of the chairs. I mean, it's a simple act. It's a simple chair, but I mean, it's the meaning behind it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Mike. It truly, it truly is the meaning behind it. And, you know, that hangs on the wall when the doctor provider walks in, they'll grab that or they'll sit down on the side of the bed and have that conversation with the patient and their family. And and um, it's a simple act and you know, it it's proven to work.
SPEAKER_00So, Mike, I know you're involved in a lot at our facility, a lot of amazing things. Tell us about, you know, the culture that we're trying to build here, you know, within our own staff and within our patients. We have a lot of good initiatives going on to have happy patients.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, we we have a standards of behavior uh committee within our hospital. And that committee is really set apart and really defined what standards our employees should should have. And that benefits not only our employees, but it also benefits our whole are the patients, the families that we take care of. So we're we're seeing we're seeing things like that. We're seeing um, you know, just a bunch of different um acts of kindness that that go on within our hospital. And and it's really impressive to to watch.
SPEAKER_00I know we've had a lot of changes over the last couple of years at our hospital, made uh various improvements, added different services. What would you say to someone who's maybe not used our services before or maybe, you know, has in the past? What would you say to them?
SPEAKER_01Well, what's really gonna surprise you at our hospital is that when you walk into it, it's not gonna be, you're not gonna be just another number. You're not gonna be uh a room number that you're known by or a patient ID number that you're gonna be known by. Nine out of ten times you're gonna know somebody. And nine out of ten times those people are gonna call you by their your name and they're gonna walk you to where you need to go. Or they're gonna make sure that um if you're there over the noon hour or they're at breakfast time with a family member that we're gonna provide you a meal. One of the neat things we do is our patients that are in surgery or on the floor, any of their visitors up to two, we'll we'll feed them during that lunchtime. So we can bring those family members into that room, surround that patient and their loved ones with compassion and their family members so they can eat and socialize during that time. It just, it's just completely better outcomes. And these outcomes are are pretty impressive, particularly in our swing bed. Um, you know, our swing bed is is 90, 90 percent uh of our patients return back to to normal prior their prior level of care, right? Yeah, prior to level of their care. So it's impressive. And and those numbers are are outstanding compared to state numbers, other state numbers.
SPEAKER_00Mike, you mentioned food. Tell us tell us about the cafeteria here at LRH. I know it's one of my favorite places to go. I see you there occasionally.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I kind of look like I eat there a lot. So yeah. It's amazing, you know. Those ladies there, they they do uh amazing stuff. And it's not out of the can or out-of-the-box type food. You know, they they are always whipping up something from scratch and making wonderful desserts and and breakfast and and dinner and omelets and all that other stuff. I'm I mean, I'm hungry just thinking about it. But and I just got time with lunch. So, but um, our patients even comment about that. And then if if your facility has good food, you know, we're we're nourishing the body with good food, uh, it's just a better outcome for them of getting back to to what they were before prior to coming in the hospital.
SPEAKER_00So, Mike, maybe the commit to sit set aside, what else are you proud of regarding our patient experience or what our staff is doing for patients?
SPEAKER_01Oh, wow. Um I I'll tell you, you know, the one of the things that I always preach uh and not necessarily pre-preach, but I speak about to our staff is, you know, a patient looks at the four walls. They're they're in they're in a room looking at the four walls 24 hours a day in a hospital setting. And what we like to see is that the the patient or that our staff is just not there to um do the job and get a paycheck. Um what I what I say to them is that patient will know whether or not when you walk into the room, if you're there for a paycheck or you're there to provide compassionate care and love. And it clearly stands out. And that's the one thing I know for sure that our staff is doing. And and initiating the commit to sit, what we're doing is we're actually as an administration, as as a team, giving permission to our staff to slow down. And I know that's crazy to hear, but but I truly believe that COVID caused a lot of our staff to be in this rush rush, all these things they have to do. Right. And we haven't, and we forgot about why our nursing staff and why our staff signed up to be nurses or why our doctors signed up to be doctors or providers. And we want to get back to those roots of hey, remember why you signed up and remember the love that you were there and the care that you wanted to provide. And let's get back to that.
SPEAKER_00I love that, Mike. We're doing amazing things and I'm excited for our community to to experience that first again too.
SPEAKER_01You know, my job's easy. Um, because not because of what I do, but because of the people that are there. And our staff is wonderful. Our community, Baxter Hospital, they're wonderful people. And the combination of the two make Lexington Regional Health Center the best. And it it it takes our community, it takes our our our staff members to make it that way. And it's it's amazing.
SPEAKER_00Mike, what haven't we talked about that that we would have missed, or what else should our community know?
SPEAKER_01Well, um, if you're at our hospital and something doesn't go the way that you feel like it should go, what you're going to do is you're going to be visited by me every day if you're an inpatient person. And I want to know whether or not that there's a problem, or as much as I want to know if there's something good that's going on as well. And so uh we want to handle or we want to address that issue and fix that right away instead of finding out three weeks later that there's an issue. And though we have very few issues, um, when we do, it's addressed right away. And we learn from that and we discussed that maybe at our executive meetings or with our providers or whatever it might be. That's the type of culture we have. We're not going to do everything perfect, but we're we're gonna try.
SPEAKER_00Talk to us about our surveys and just, you know, the importance of community filling those out.
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. So in the inpatient and in our ED, you'll receive a survey from Press Ganey as well as from our outpatient services, whether you come in for a lab or you come in for an X-ray. Um, in our clinic, you may receive a survey. Um and in our rehab, we're just beginning that as well. So you may receive a survey in the mail or uh via text message or in an email. We really encourage our cuss or our patients that receive those to fill those out. Um, because here this is this is truly what I think is our staff is doing such wonderful things that I want to see them get credit for that. And they deserve to hear, um, they seldom hear um the the positive things that they're doing, and they deserve to hear it even more than what they hear it. And this is just a a way that they can hear what they're doing and and see on paper what they're doing. That we're not going to concentrate so much on the numbers. What we want to concentrate on is is the improvements that we can make.
SPEAKER_00I love that. And what what we don't know, we can't fix. So we we want that. I mean, all of the feedback, positive construction, yeah, constructive feedback.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. You know, some of these surveys that are sent out to people in bigger hospitals and stuff, those are all tied into monetary payments through insurance companies. That's not how it is in a rural hospital. Um, there those are our surveys are simply tied in and solely tied into improvements.
SPEAKER_00I love that, Mike. Thank you so much for sharing about this initiative. I am excited that we have this here, excited that we have a team, I mean, taking care of our patients.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00So, to our listeners, hopefully you learned a little bit more about the Commit to Sit initiative. And to our community, please know that Lexington Regional Health Center, we are here for you. We believe that great care starts with listening, and we are committed to taking the time to hear your concerns, answer your questions, and partner with you in your care. To our fellow healthcare professionals listening, this is a reminder to you that sometimes the simplest actions have the greatest impact. So take, you know, take your time, slow down, pull up a chair, take a moment to connect. We know that you're probably doing already, but just another good reminder for all of us. Thank you guys for joining us for Vitals and Voices. And until next time, stay well.