TouchPoints: Moments that Matter in Healthcare
TouchPoints: Moments that Matter in Healthcare explores the critical moments in the patient journey where leadership, operations, and experience intersect.
Hosted by Melissa Gilkes-Smith, patient experience consultant and Founder of Healthcare Management Consulting Group, the podcast features practical insights and conversations with healthcare leaders about improving patient experience, strengthening healthcare operations, and building cultures of care.
Each episode examines real healthcare touchpoints, from scheduling and patient access to communication, leadership, and service recovery, offering strategies that healthcare executives, practice administrators, and clinicians can apply immediately.
If you are passionate about improving healthcare delivery and creating better patient experiences, this podcast is for you.
TouchPoints: Moments that Matter in Healthcare
The Irreplaceable Provider:How Clinician Communication Defines the Patient Experience
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The patient is in the room. The provider walks in. And what happens next will define more of the patient’s felt experience than almost anything else in the entire care journey.
In this episode of TouchPoints: Moments that Matter, host Melissa Gilkes-Smith arrives at Pillar Five of the Nine Pillars of Patient Experience Framework: the Clinical Encounter. Everything that came before, how a patient found you, scheduled with you, was communicated with before their visit, and experienced their arrival, has been building toward this single moment. And what a patient takes away from it depends far less on clinical technique than most providers realize.
Patients are rarely equipped to evaluate the technical quality of their care. What they evaluate is the communication. Whether they felt heard. Whether they understood what was happening and why. Whether the provider in front of them made them feel like a person or a problem.
Melissa’s guest today has spent 15 years at one of the most unusual intersections in healthcare: practicing medicine, building companies, and training some of the world’s top doctors and executives on the one skill that determines every outcome — trust. Shawn Gibbs is a serial entrepreneur, medical provider, Co-Founder and CEO of GIV Gowns, and the creator of the Irreplaceable Provider Method — a system built on one foundational belief: trust in healthcare has been underdesigned. And it can be fixed.
Together, Melissa and Shawn unpack what the clinical encounter actually is when it’s working, why it so often isn’t, and what it takes, practically, behaviorally, and culturally, to become the provider patients choose, return to, and recommend.
IN THIS EPISODE:
- Why trust in healthcare has been “underdesigned," and what that costs in patient adherence, loyalty, and outcomes
- What the Irreplaceable Provider Method is and the specific communication behaviors it builds
- Why listening is a clinical skill, and how it is fundamentally different from information gathering
- The highest-stakes Moments that Matter inside the clinical encounter: the opening, the delivery of information, and the close
- How to design a well-structured clinical opening when the provider is behind schedule and the patient is already anxious
- How the close of an encounter determines whether a patient leaves with clarity or confusion, and what happens when it’s left to chance
- Why communication quality is a leadership responsibility, not a provider personality trait
- How Accountability and Collaboration, two of the four values of the Culture of Care, live inside the exam room
ABOUT SHAWN GIBBS
Shawn Gibbs is a serial entrepreneur, medical provider, and Co-Founder and CEO of GIV Gowns — a company redesigning the most overlooked moment in healthcare: the one before the provider ever enters the room. After 15 years on the front lines of clinical medicine, Shawn identified a problem no one was naming: that trust in healthcare has been underdesigned. GIV Gowns serves as a physical trust signal, elevating patient dignity through premium, clinically intelligent attire. The Irreplaceable Provider Method trains providers to become the ones patients choose, return to, and recommend. Together, they form what Shawn calls the Patient and Clinical Experience Architecture, a new standard for how trust is designed in care.
CONNECT WITH SHAWN GIBBS
GIV Gowns: www.givgowns.com
Irreplaceable Provider Method: www.shawngibbs.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-gibbs-8ba39a43
LISTENER CHALLENGE
In your next clinical encounter, or your next conversation about clinical quality in your organization, ask one question: Does this patient feel heard? Not informed. Not treated. Heard. That’s the starting point for everything discussed in this episode.
Welcome back to Touch Points. Today we arrive at a pillar that sits at the very center of the patient journey. Pillar five, the clinical encounter. Everything we've talked about up to this point, initial exposure, scheduling, pre-visit communication, arrival and check-in, all of it is building towards this moment. The patient is in the room, the provider walks in, and what happens next will define more of the patient's felt experience than almost anything else in the entire journey. Here's what I want you to hold on to as you listen today. Patients are rarely equipped to evaluate the technical quality of their clinical care. What they evaluate is the communication, whether they felt heard, whether they understood what is happening and why, whether the provider in front of them made them feel like a person or a problem. The clinical encounter is above almost everything else a communication event. And my guest today has built his career and his company around that exact insight. Today's guest has spent 15 years at one of the most unique intersections you'll find practicing medicine, building companies, and training some of the world's top doctors, executives, and organizations on the one skill that determines every outcome trust. As a serial entrepreneur with three companies, either founded, scaled, or sold, creator of the irreplaceable provider method, and co-founder and CEO of GiveGowns, he brings a perspective that is equal parts clinical, entrepreneurial, and deeply human. His core belief that outcomes in healthcare, business, and life are decided before anyone ever walks through the door. Is going to change the way you think about leadership, dignity, and what it actually means to earn the people in front of you. Sean, welcome to Touch Points.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much, Melissa. I'm excited to be here. What an intro.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm really excited to have you. You know, we have a couple of things to uh to talk about. Your bring your own gown campaign. That's really exciting. So you know, tell us about it.
SPEAKER_01So we originally, when we launched Give Gowns, we launched January of 26th. So January of this year, and we were primarily just directly focused on business to business and going into hospitals and clinics, large, small, all of them, uh, all the subspecialties and getting a lot of traction and movement. And I just kept getting so many people on social media sending me messages and saying, This is awesome, but what if my provider takes two years to buy these things? What if I want one for myself or for my friend or you know, my my sister's having a baby? I want to buy one for her or something like that. And finally, I just woke up one morning and said, Why are we waiting? Like, let's just everybody deserves dignity. Let's take dignity to everyone. And so we opened up direct to consumer uh last Friday, and it's been it's been uh turbocharged ever since.
SPEAKER_00Need to uh start using the hashtag BYOG, right?
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh. You got it. Yep. Everything has BYOG in there. Bring your own dignity. And it's kind of the own your own healthcare journey, right? And just plays into everything that we're going to talk about today.
SPEAKER_00I'm looking forward to receiving mine. I um I really want to see, you know, the reaction when I say, oh no, it's okay. I have my own gown.
SPEAKER_01It's happened multiple times already. I'm I'm getting videos sent to me where people are detailing it. Uh it's really exciting. And I think one of the things that hold, at least in the beginning, I thought was going to hold people back because they were worried, well, what is what will my doctor say? Like, are they going to be okay with me bringing my own gown? And actually the uh the reverse has happened is now their doctors are coming and buying their own gowns, or they're sending me requests for, hey, can you outfit my clinic because of it? So it's actually working the other way, as opposed to providers saying, hey, what the heck is this thing? What do I do with it? They're saying, where do I get them?
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, we need to change that thought process to you're going to be okay with me bringing my own gown.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And and then we also forget that uh this is a human healthcare experience, right? And yes, we have this fun way of putting providers and patients in two different boxes. And uh providers are also patients.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_03Right?
SPEAKER_01They also have health challenges. They have and and they want to feel dignity and they want to feel secure. So this is not just for patients, it's for humans. Uh, because everybody's gonna be a patient at some point in their life, and we all want to feel uniquely human and dignified, and the same human that walked in is the same human that walks out.
SPEAKER_00I love that. I love that. So let's move over to uh trust in healthcare and you know, provider communication, that clinical encounter. You've described trust in healthcare as underdesigned, and that's really a specific and provocative framing. So, what do you mean by it? And what do you see it in that way after 15 years of practicing?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I have I have eight different branches I want to go on that, Melissa. So I'm gonna take them one at a time. But um the the key word to me in that statement is intentionality. Right? It it's easy to hope that there's an inevitable outcome. And if I'm if I'm a good provider and I come in and I get the job done, and what I'm hoping is that this patient is gonna trust me, and then I'm hoping that they'll come back or they'll follow up or they'll follow through on the thing that we recommended, or we're hoping that they'll tell their friends so I can grow my clinic. But but they're all hopes, right? And hope is not a strategy. So intentionality is the key here. And I I think one of the unique aspects to that is having started my own um clinic and having to think about that from a very different perspective. Because when you're the provider, you're kind of just in and out of rooms and get the job done. But when you're the one that owns it and you're responsible for the patients that come into that clinic, their experience, and trying to earn their trust, you have to be very intentional from the way you present yourself online. Does that match with the physical presence when they walk in, to the way that they're greeted, to the way that they're brought to the waiting room, to what they wear when they're waiting for you, to how you as a provider enter the room, to the way that you engage with them, you hold yourself, you carry presence. All of that can be and should be intentionally designed into the process, especially in this age of AI, where I have a lot of um providers reaching out to me that I'm that I'm trying to help kind of work through this whole idea of burnout and am I going to get replaced by AI? That's why I call it the irreplaceable provider method, because there is a way to become irreplaceable in medicine. And it's to develop and practice using the skills that help you earn a patient's trust. And that is something that is uniquely human. AI cannot replicate a handhold. Um, AI cannot replicate, I have to deliver bad news, but I can deliver that in a way that I have practiced, that I have learned, that can engender confidence and trust. And I can push that into the heart and mind of my patient to where, yeah, this is an unfortunate diagnosis, but I am not the diagnosis. I am Melissa with a diagnosis. I'm still uniquely Melissa. And that's where you earn somebody's trust in every phase of this. And it's not, it's not meant to be hokey or fake, it's meant to be very personal, right? And very real, but it needs to be intentionally designed into everything that you do and that we do in that visit.
SPEAKER_00So let's go over specifically. So you mentioned it, the irreplaceable provider method. So, because this is you know the heart of what I want our listeners to take away today. You know, what is it? What problem is it specifically designed to solve?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So the irreplaceable provider method at its core is is encompassed by a couple of different frameworks that I developed. And one is the trust framework. And trust is an acronym uniquely designed to be based around trust, you know, go figure. But the first part of that trust framework is trust priming through dignity. So prior to a provider ever walking in a room, that patient is deciding whether they trust where they're at. They're looking around the room, they're gauging the way that they were greeted, they're seeing what they're wearing when they're sitting and they're waiting for you. They're making a determination as to whether they're going to come back prior to a provider ever walks in. And that's something that I'm constantly trying to help people understand is that you are in trust before you ever walk in. And what happens after that is kind of the final, final motion, the final derivative kind of determination on the part of a patient. So this trust priming through dignity is saying, I'm gonna set the stage by giving you a physical token. Something that you wear. And obviously, from my standpoint, that's in the form of give gout. That's in the form of specifically designed patient attire to replace the old status quo with your backside hanging out and everything. That is an automatic physical trust signal so that the patient knows before you ever walk in, you can trust me. You can trust us. We respect your dignity, we respect your privacy, uh, but we also want to be equal parts efficient and make sure that you got the exam that you came for. So trust priming through dignity is I'm gonna address your dignity right up front. I'm gonna put you in a give gown and I'm gonna make sure that you, before I ever walk here, are feeling confident and engaged. And I had one of my colleagues that we talked about this before we hopped on, that I sent her a gown and she was gonna pass it around the entire hospital and show it to people. And the first thing she told me was, I actually took it to my own dermatology visit to get my annual skin check. And she said, I walked in with my own gown and they and I felt so bougie. And I I felt so confident. It was weird to be in a dermatology appointment where I was about to be completely thoroughly examined, and instead of being anxious, I was confident. Like, what an interesting emotion to equate to a provider visit, right? Typically we can go when we go to the doctor's office, confidence is not the word that is instilled. So um, so trust framing through dignity is one. And before I run through the rest, um, I want to pass the mic to you, Melissa, and say any anything that you want to ask on that point, because you know I can get talky.
SPEAKER_00One of the things you you um you talked about was that you know you're building trust with that patient as soon as they they they real they know your practice, that initial exposure. You're building, you know, trust and confidence on that website. You're building trust and confidence as they um provide you that pre-visit communication, those reminders, they're prepping you for their appointment. You build that trust when the patient walks through the door of the main building. Are you in like a large medical building? What does that wayfinding look like? Do they know how to get to your office? Do they know if, hey, there's construction on, you know, this first level of the, you know, the garage, go to the second level, you know, all of that communication, you know, and that um all of those touch points build that trust.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And if a patient, as you mentioned, you know, has confidence in that appointment, you know, in that clinical exam, they're wearing a gown that doesn't have their backside hanging out. Not only are they they're they're confident, but they're also comfortable, which makes them a better patient and they're able to listen better and communicate better their needs because they're not there because you know, they just want to, you know, sit down and chat with you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, hang out.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yeah, they they're there for a reason and they have a list of reasons, but having that gown and that confidence, it brings you both more on the same level.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Yeah. And just like any interpersonal interaction, whether in healthcare, in business, or between a husband and a wife or friends, every engagement is going to lead to better outcomes when the core of that engagement is I trust, right? I have I have extended my trust, you've received it, you've extended your trust. And when combined, we're both dedicated to extending our trust and receiving trust, that naturally gravitates into confidence. And when you're confident, you're more engaged. And when somebody is more engaged in a healthcare interaction, one of the reasons why providers talk about being burnt out all the time is because they feel like they're being disengaged from the healthcare process because they have patients that are disengaged. So what could have been taken care of three years ago, now it becomes an emergent thing. And that emergent thing is supposed to be solved in five minutes. And now I'm supposed to solve 30 years of habits in five minutes so I can get on to the next patient. So I'm not penalized on my next paycheck and yada, yada, yada. And so then we get this burnout, right? But it's because there's no inherent trust there. I don't trust that this patient will have done what I asked them to do, and the patient is coming in and saying, Well, I don't trust this system. I don't even know you. It's the first time I've ever met you. I'm wearing this silly gown and I feel really uncomfortable and overly exposed. Like trust is the epicenter of all positive outcomes. And it's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about it. You and I equally are so passionate about it, because without without trust, it's going to make the inevitability of a positive outcome a really, really hard attainable. And out and outcomes are 100% something that are attainable, but it requires reverse engineering, which is a part of this irreplaceable provider method, right? This outcome cascade that I call it is I can get you, like I can show you how to get the outcomes that you want. And we can go through those and we can align them out. And I do, I do a whole bunch of consulting on that side to providers and clinics and executives and everybody else. But the idea is tell me your outcomes, but we're going all the way back to dignity. How are you addressing human dignity at its core? And how are you earning trust? Because unless you figured out those two things, the first part of that cascade, the likelihood you reach inevitable outcomes is very, very small.
SPEAKER_00Outcomes is, you know, has a lot to do with it's on the patient too. So if the patient the entire time is thinking, am I, am I showing something? And they're trying to, you know, tuck that gown in and everything, they're not exactly hearing you. They're not a part of the conversation. And they're not thinking about those questions that they initially wanted to ask. Um, they're just, you know, really focused on, you know, what am I, what am I wearing? What am I looking at at, you know, right now? And am I, am I just a checklist? Um patients don't need to know that providers have a MIPS checklist that they have to go through. They have to remember to touch on each of these points. They have to, you know, um make sure that they're documenting everything that you're saying. They have to make sure that, you know, they're they're on time and they're they're moving quickly and they're, oh, wait a minute, I'm 10 minutes behind. So maybe I need to hurry up this conversation. And patients don't need to feel that.
SPEAKER_01No. Nope. They don't need to feel that. And and the best way that I have found in a patient interaction is to get them primed before you ever walk in the room. And I'm yet to find anything that does that better than putting them in a give gown. I'm yet to find it. Because when I walk in and that patient is not to your point, worried about how it fits, does it fit? Am I exploding out of it? Um, is it covering me? Is it going to be effective? Um, when that is not the emphasis of, you know, distracting them from the reason why they're there to your point, it changes the entirety of the visit. And before and now when the provider walks in, 80% of the work is done. They already feel confident and engaged because they were dignified and extended their trust. So now you've already moved on to step four of getting to your outcomes, right? And now you can just focus on now, let me deliver on the outcomes that we're both looking for. You want this exam, I'm here to deliver it. We come together as a unified kind of entity here, both extending our trust, and you get outcomes. But it has to start with that very introductory process. And that's why I named it trust priming. You're priming that patient and earning their trust by touching on their dignity before you ever, ever walk in that space.
SPEAKER_00So kind of walk me through that what this provider actually learns in this method. So at not at a conceptual met uh level, but what are these specific communication skills or behaviors that change or that you're looking to change?
SPEAKER_01That second part of this trust framework is called relational presence. And what they learn is starting at the very beginning, they learn to understand the importance of earning trust, right? That's and how they their presence earns them trust. So for some, it's we learn how to knock on a door. For some, it's we learn how to review a chart effectively and efficiently before you ever walk in there. So the first thing you say to that patient isn't, what are you here for today?
SPEAKER_00I hate that.
SPEAKER_01Well, they already put they already put that on their forms before they came in. They were asked that at the front desk and they were asked that by your MA when they were put into the exam room. You come in as a fourth timer and say, Hey, what are you here for today? All that does is just say, You have no idea who I am. You have no idea why I'm here. And now on the provider side, we're constantly whining about how long patients' visits take or how long we're having to spend in there. And it's like, well, you just wasted five minutes yourself because now the patient is reiterating for a fourth time what they're doing there.
SPEAKER_02It's a very different conversation when you walk in and say, Melissa, I understand you're here for some abdominal pain. Oh, he knows my name. He knows why I'm here. And he smiled at me when I when he walked in the door.
SPEAKER_01And he's not looking at his laptop before he ever addressed me. Okay, I would like to extend my trust. Yeah, I am having some abdominal pain. You just blew through five minutes of introductions and earned a thousand percent more trust. So it really is the from the from before you walk in the room, we're talking about how do you do it? We're talking about knowing the person's first name, we're talking about knowing any kind of details from the last visit. We're talking about reviewing their chart, that chief complaint, why are they here? You're smiling, you're looking them in the eye, you're addressing their concern right out of the gate, and you're calling them by their first name. And so it starts with even that right out of the gates, because those are learned skills that earn you trust and more efficiently give you time in a visit. So we're going directly to, yeah, tell me about your problem. I already know, I know all the background. I know you've got abdominal pain. I know that's why you're here. Like, I just want to get into the nitty-gritty and and you're excited about it. The way a provider sits in a chair, the amount of time that they spend looking at you versus looking at that silly laptop. Um, all of those things are learned skills that I teach through here. And just like anything, it depends on you know, the provider's confidence levels and what they're already doing and how well they already do it can kind of move through there, right? But a second part that we talk about a lot is is the you of this trust framework is understanding before explaining. Uh, it's I would say 85% of the time for anybody who's been in their chosen field uh for over three years, if somebody were to say I'm having abdominal pain, I'm 85% of the way there just on that. I'm 85% of the way there on my diagnosis. I have headaches. I'm 85% of the way there. If you're an OBGYN and a woman says, I'm having, you know, this kind of pelvic pain, I can say, Well, where are they at in the process? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm 85% of the way there. I already know most of the diagnosis. I'm just getting little details now. So as providers, we A tendency to come in with that perspective and not allow, not pass you the mic. And when it's I'm gonna tell you what's happening before you get a chance to tell me what's happening, you you're losing trust. It's seeping out of every pore of that human, right? The patient has to be past the mic and listening without interrupting and having consistent eye contact. And it's okay to look away for a couple seconds to take some notes, but you need to come right back to that and say, I understand, I understand. And that's frustrating. I can see why that would be hard. All of these things.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna say, what is that saying? Too many times we listen to reply versus listening to understand.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. And and it's obvious. It's obvious to the patient when they're saying, Yeah, I'm having this kind of an issue, and you give a predetermined answer, and they're like, that doesn't even pertain to what I just said. Like that, you're you're not even you're not even listening, right? So that understanding before explaining is an incredibly powerful learned skill. Um, and it doesn't have to take 30 minutes. The things that you've done before that have earned you enough trust to where for the majority of patients, they recognize that you're paying attention. And there are learned touch points in there that a provider can extend to help patients feel and understand that I'm listening and the way that I carry myself. I'm not, you know, looking around while you're talking, I'm engaged. Like all of these things are learned skills that don't come naturally to a lot of people, just like everything else. Us being on this podcast, these are learned skills, right? They're things that you get over repetitions, and providers can do that as well. But they're a lot of times really fearful of taking on that side of becoming something different outside of being a medical provider. And it's the sooner I can get my providers and uh my colleagues to start recognizing and start thinking about patients as clients, because you're part of a business. And as a client, you want to continue to extend your patronage, but all of those decisions are based on whether you trust that place where you go.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely agree. The um so there are a lot of operational demands, you know, on clinicians. There's, you know, the it's just all of the requirements, you know, MIPS, documentation, just, you know, all of the, you know, in insurance requirements, you know, what insurance does this patient patient have so I can recommend the specific procedure or you know, medication that the insurance is going to, you know, pay for. Um, and so how does the irreplaceable provider method address the tension between the operational demands of the clinical environment and the communication quality the patient really needs?
SPEAKER_01I love that question so much. Um this is gonna sound like a broken record. Uh, but if you if you step into a clinic where it is very obvious that the owner of that clinic or the provider that is overseeing that pod within a healthcare system, when they have created trusting relationships with their patients, with their staff, with their office manager, when they have invested time and energy and intentionality, right, into how do I earn the trust of my MAs? How do I earn the trust of my office manager, right? It is miraculous, and I'm doing this in quotes if you're just listening. It is miraculous, not miraculous, how your MAs will show up differently for you. They will do the things without you asking them. Your office manager will handle things without you having to constantly be on their back. Your front desk will do the things that you have trained them to do without you having to reiterate, right? Because you have created an environment where you have earned their trust. And in any kind of personal relationship, if the outcome you want is efficiency, right? Taking that entire outcome cascade, if I'm the provider and heading up a pod of the hospital or my own personal clinic or whatever, if my outcome is I want the most efficient clinic possible, I'm gonna say, wonderful. But if your initial impression is to go to, I'm gonna implement 56 AI tools and I'm gonna bring in all this training to make people watch all these videos. And at the same time, the people that are consuming that information don't trust you. If you have not addressed their base dignity as humans, if you have not intentionally designed trust into the way that you talk to them, into the way that you interact with them, those outcomes of you having the most efficient clinic on the planet is highly unlikely because your attrition is gonna be horrible. Um, you're gonna find people in and out, in and out, in and out. And the office manager is like, man, I feel like I'm constantly have indeed up on my on my desktop because we can't keep people, and then they're frustrated why they can't keep people.
SPEAKER_00Constantly training.
SPEAKER_01You're constantly training. And as everybody knows in business, that is the most expensive proposition you can bring to the table. Is if I am constantly training, you are just throwing money out the door in resources and time. Uh, so it all comes back to if we want efficiency, we want the MIPS, we want the scores, we want the everything outcome, reverse engineer that sucker and get right back to what am I doing to invest in the inherent human dignity of the people that work with me and how am I earning their trust? Intentionally. Put time into that exercise, and those outcomes become inevitable. You'll get them. Like my the clinics that I have scaled, started, operated, sold, whatever it is, designed with intentionality. Guess what words I never had to think about? I never had to worry about whether a prescription made it to the pharmacy, I never had to worry about MIPS, I never had to worry about any of that. Not because I'm awesome, but because it was intentionally designed into I don't think Becky's doing okay.
SPEAKER_02How can I show up for her today?
SPEAKER_01Guys, team meeting. How do we show up for Becky today? Yeah, Becky's not doing great. Okay, I was I could tell she doesn't seem to be doing really well. Like, anybody know what's going on? She's not doing okay. Well, base dignity dictates that we need to do something to make Becky feel safe. We need to make do something to make Becky feel heard and understood. Okay, how do we earn her trust right now? How do we let her know that we care about her? Now you could go on with the entire day as planned, totally ignore Becky and say she'll be fine in a week. We all go through stuff, it's just work, you know? Or you could intentionally say, How do we show up for Becky? And now once you've addressed her dignity and earned her trust, you know what you never have to do again? Ever worry about your prescriptions being called in. Ever worry about how she addresses a patient, ever worry about when they say, Who should I see next time I come in? I mean, this guy has my complete trust. You or girl. You need you need to see them. You need to see them. And now they're your champion because you earned her trust. And that's how you get to the end outcome of the best operational flow, the most efficient clinic on the planet is determine your outcome, intentionally designed around it.
SPEAKER_00Agreed. I can walk into a clinic, whether I'm a consultant or a patient, and I can tell whether the system is broken by the dance. Either you were stumbling all over each other, or you were just gliding across the floor. And if you're gliding, I know that the leadership, that the physicians, that the team, everybody, it's they they work as one, they trust each other. It's the culture of care. It's accountability, it's compassion, it's empathy, and it's collaboration. And it's not just towards the patient, but it's within, you know, it's for each other.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, we're all customers of each other.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00And so before we learn how to improve that patient experience, we need to learn how to improve that employee experience because we can't be there for the patients if we're not there for each other.
SPEAKER_01100%. It is, it is a symbiotic relationship, and every aspect of it feeds off of each other. It's it's kids know when mom and dad were just in a fight. And patients know when when provider and staff don't like each other. Uh it's it's not hard. It's not hard to see. That trust isn't there. Um and patients feel it. And then what's the likelihood that they want to step into that hot pot ever again? That's okay. I think I'll find another office to go to.
SPEAKER_00So these, of course, these are all learnable skills. And so, what does learning it actually require? So, what does this training program kind of look like? Is this coaching? Is this workshops? Is this feedback loops? Um, you know, what do you find that works and and what does it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So knowing that everybody has a different amount of time on their hands, knowing that everybody likes to learn differently. Um some people love the one-on-one, some people like a group setting, some people like to learn at their own pace. On my website, seangibs.com, I have several different ways of doing it, trying to hit on every aspect of this. People can just download um just a printable PDF that they can work through with their teams and the trust framework and just say, hey, here's a metric. How are we doing here? And and let's just, we're gonna own that ourselves, to a smaller ebook that kind of presents the entire framework as a whole and says, here's some easy ways to get started, all the way to going deeper in depth on the outcome cascade or the trust framework, or having me come into your clinic and talk to the providers, talk to the staff, implement give gowns and teach the entire staff, hey, here's how you introduce give gowns to patients, um, to one-on-one training, mentorship, coaching, whatever you want to call it. Like six different ways for us to be able to work together and to make it easy to implement whichever part of this people want to. Uh, because inherently the recognizing the outcome that I want, right? The outcome that I want is I want to, I want trust to be intentionally designed into healthcare. And so I created a whole slew of ways for people to be able to consume it, whether you're an executive, whether you're a director of whatever, whether you're a provider, or whether you're a medical assistant, right? Or you're a patient. But there's also a link to GiveGowns on there where people can go in there and see the new website. Um, they can see it from a consumer site, and we also have a for facilities tab where they'll get a drop down and they'll talk about hey, here's data, here's the reasons for, here's why it was created, here's what actually happens. Like there are studies to support these things of how patients feel and that they are avoiding care. All of it is available. Um, and I wanted to make it as easy and seamless as possible for anybody to be able to access that because outcome, let's get to the root, let's get to the intentionality and provide ways to be able to get to your outcomes.
SPEAKER_00So, speaking of outcome, let's, you know, kind of we were talking about the clinical encounter, um, what happens inside the room. Now, you know, there's the closing. And because I think checkout and the end of the clinical encounter are where patients leave, they're either feeling confident or they're feeling confused. And confusion turns into anxiety, turns into a phone call to the office, or worse, you know, you get that bad review on Google. Um, what does a provider do at the end of the encounter to make sure the uh patient, you know, actually leaves with clarity?
SPEAKER_01Melissa, you're so good at this. Just led right into the last two. So the last S in trust, the acronym is structured confidence. And the last T is transfer of ownership, right? And let me walk through what those actually mean. So structured confidence means that patient has been giving really clear direction, really clear next steps. And I'm telling you, all of that can be done in a summary statement. Melissa, you came in, we talked about your abdominal pain. Here's the two or three things that we talked about. Here's the next steps. This is going to be there, whether it's at the pharmacy or this is what we're gonna do, or um, here's the test that we're gonna run. So your homework, get your prescription, walk out to my front desk and schedule your ultrasound, whatever. I'm, you know, walking through a taxi visit here. Um, and then we're gonna follow up in six weeks. I know that's a lot. Melissa, what is your understanding of what you're gonna do next? Transfer of ownership. Uh, I'm gonna go get a prescription. Nailed it. That's one. What are the other two things? And it's not to make the other person feel silly. It's so that they're empowered to know what their next steps are. Like, remember, you're gonna go out and schedule that out for sound, and then I don't remember the third one. Okay, well, the third one is we're gonna do this. Okay, so tell me again, what are we gonna do? Boom, boom, boom. I love it. We're following up when? Six weeks. Six weeks, high five. And that transfer of ownership is now patient goes to the pharmacy and pharmacy says, Oh, I don't think they called in your prescription. I don't have one. You do. You have one. Yeah, because we talked about that. And I know what I'm supposed to do. And I never heard on that ultrasound. They never called me. I know that we did it because I was standing right there when we did it, right? Now they're taking charge of their own healthcare journey. There's been a transfer of ownership in that summary statement. And then that other transfer of ownership for the provider is now as they walk out of the room and convey that exact same information to their MA or whoever is gonna walk them through the next part of that healthcare journey, right? Is now the MA is coming back in and saying, okay, here are the three things. And they're like, Yeah, I already know. They walk through them with me. I'm gonna do this, this, and this. So, where is this person I'm supposed to talk to about my ultrasound?
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Confidence, confidence to engagement to outcomes. Boom, boom, boom, right? And now that patient is like, oh, I'm gonna own my own thing. And the next time I come in, I'm gonna sling my own give gown over my shoulders and imagine what that next visit looks like, right? They're coming in with, I know exactly how I feel when I go in there because I have my own give gown, or I know the clinic provides it. I know exactly how the provider is gonna enter that room. I know that before I leave, it's gonna be really clearly defined what my next steps are. And I'm gonna understand them before I walk out and know I know exactly what the next steps are. There is zero parts in there that have not been discussed. That's how you get trusted outcomes.
SPEAKER_00You just made that patient provider relationship a partnership.
SPEAKER_01A partnership, and then the next time they come in, I'm walking in and saying, How was your ultrasound? Did you get your stuff? And how did that go? Right? And you look amazing in that give gown. Like all of that, and like, oh, thank you. You know, and I did get my ultrasound and it was blah, blah, blah. And you're like, I know, I already read the report. Like, I don't I don't mean walk through the report. I was just wondering how you're doing. And like, let's talk about how the medication is working. And that again, you just bypassed 10 minutes of a catch up because of the aforementioned. I already know what you did. I looked at it before I came in. Like, I'm not saying you need to repeat it all. I'm just saying, like, how are you? Here's the things that we talked about last time, and we're instantly engaged in the process. And you trust me, I trust you, I trust that you did it, and you trust me that I care.
SPEAKER_00So I want to speak directly to the clinicians listening right now because I know some of them are hearing all of this and feeling two things at once. Number one, I know this matters, and I don't know where to begin. So for the provider who genuinely wants to become more irreplaceable, um, who wants to build that kind of trust with patients that results in the loyalty, the referrals, and the real you know, clinical partnerships that we just spoke about, what is the first thing to change?
SPEAKER_01In my mind, the first thing to change is the desire to be intentional. Like if I have a desire to be intentional about the process, if I want to be it, it it's really coming to a determination that I want to do something different. And and the very first thing I tell to any friend, any provider, any anybody that I'm ever talking to is you need to take some time and get settled with where are you at? Like, how are you? How are you doing? And just spend some time getting okay with you and where you're at, and decide if your next step is I want to be intentional about this. And I actually want to become irreplaceable. That's important to me. I don't want to have AI be able to impact my job. I want to be the provider that patients trust and that patients choose. It's totally within reach. So, what really remains is you weren't doing any of this before, and you're having an inkling, a desire, maybe a strong desire to do it now. It's just be intentional about the next phase of your decision and decide what is it that I want? Sit with you and decide what is your outcome. And then if we end up getting on the phone and we end up talking and you end up scheduling some time or whatever you want to do, the first thing I'm gonna say is Rhonda, John, Paul, Trisha, what do you want? What do you want? Tell me what you want. What are your dreams? What do you want to do? I want to have the best clinic on the planet. Okay. What do you want to do to get there? Because we have to talk about dignity and trust and how you're gonna earn it. And it's just again, end outcome, and then we're gonna get there. But it's you need to sit and deter determine what your outcome is.
SPEAKER_00And I think that's what exactly what our listeners to, you know, to lead with today, um, you know, as we we close the conversation. And I think that the the word of the day is intentional, how to be more intentional, you know, through every throughout every moment, every touch point, you know, during that patient journey, how can we as, you know, practice administrators, clinicians be more intentional with every moment?
SPEAKER_01It's it's it's impactful when you go into it with that mindset and that viewpoint because if if you want somebody to feel when they come into your clinic, I want them to feel calm and confident and and reserved. Well, don't play Green Day in your waiting room. Right? Don't play Metallica in your waiting room. It's a I want them to feel like this is a peaceful place. Well, then intentionally choose the type of background music, intentionally choose the type of smell that you have going in your waiting room, intentionally have like these are things that we can design into the process. You do this every day, right? Um you can intentionally create what you want. You can get that outcome, but it requires sitting with what do I want? And once you determine those outcomes, if it falls outside of the outcome that you're desiring, then you pitch it. It's distraction, it's noise, and you get rid of it. And it's I don't know how I don't know how that's going to earn the trust of a patient. Then you ditch it. And it makes your decision-making process really, really easy because you've determined I want to focus on dignity, earn trust, and we want these outcomes. Okay, well, if you want to be a pediatric clinic that's focused on dinosaurs, you can build and design around that. But then you probably ought to be intentional about what kind of music and how do you address people? And it just dives into you get into the nitty-gritty, the beautiful, messy middle that makes your outcomes inevitable. And that's what I hope people walk away from. This is it's totally within reach and it's totally doable. But figure out your outcome. What do you want?
SPEAKER_00Perfect. And I think that is exactly the right place to end. Um, you know, for our listeners, your challenge this week is simple but not easy. In your next clinical encounter or your next conversation about clinical quality in your organization, ask one question. Does this patient feel heard? Not informed, not treated, heard. And I think that's the starting point for everything Sean and I uh talked about today. So, Sean, thank you so much for your time, your perspective, for the work you're doing to bring intentionality back into the exam room. Um, I think this conversation is going to stay with a lot of people. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Hope so. Hope so. Thank you, Melissa.
