Transforming Patient Experience Through Data, Reputation, and Innovation: Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Webinar

(0:07 – 0:20) 

Hey everybody, thanks for joining us today on the GrowthRx webinar. We’re excited to have Samuel Jackson from Texas Tech University joining us today because we are celebrating their use of our reputation product. So without further ado, welcome Samuel. 

(0:21 – 0:23) 

Well, I’m happy to be here. Thank you for having me, Addison. Absolutely. 

(0:24 – 0:33) 

So one of the first things that I want to start with is who is Samuel L. Jackson? Because you are, there’s only two of you in the world, right? I believe so. Okay. So tell us about yourself. 

(0:34 – 0:55) 

Well, I currently work for Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, which is the medical enterprise school for the Texas Tech University system. And we are a large academic medical practice in West Texas. We’re the only academic medical practice between Albuquerque, New Mexico and the DFW metroplex area in Texas. 

(0:55 – 1:06) 

We have a large geographical region that we have to serve, and we’re proud to take care of our people in West Texas. And it sounds like you do a great job of it. We do our best. 

(1:06 – 1:25) 

We try to take care of the people in our own backyard. We have about 400, in some change, practitioners, as well as about 200 learners, so fellowships and residencies, or I guess I could say, we have 200 residents and fellows within our medical enterprise as well. Excellent. 

(1:25 – 1:42) 

I mean, that jumps into the scope question that I had for you to start off, but just a little bit more about yourself, because I know that you have a master’s in healthcare administration. I know that there at Texas Tech, you’ve been there for about five plus years, give or take, but you held a few different roles there, a few different director level roles. Can you tell us about that? Yeah. 

(1:42 – 1:56) 

So I got my master’s in healthcare administration from the Texas Tech University Health Science Center. So I’m a homegrown person. And I started off as the director of patient services, and then as the director of practice communications, who does a lot of work with telecommunications. 

(1:56 – 2:15) 

As he left the organization, I just took on his responsibilities and his role, and I’ve loved it ever since. I like to consider myself the junk drawer of the Health Sciences Center in Texas Tech Physicians, because I just wear many hats, and if something doesn’t have a clean home, it falls into my wheelhouse, and I’m happy to do that. Excellent. 

(2:15 – 2:29) 

Well, it sounds like you’ve been doing a great job, and if you’ve been there, like you said, homegrown, right? You’re continuing to stay there and doing great work. So without further ado, the question I have for you to start off here is, tell us a bit more about the scale of what you oversee at Texas Tech. Of course. 

(2:29 – 2:50) 

So I don’t oversee what actually happens inside the clinics. I oversee all the patient touch points across the patient experience journey. So from our digital front door all the way to our follow-up surveys, I like to oversee all of our touch points between patient, guest, visitor that comes through our building or interacts with the brand Texas Tech Physicians. 

(2:51 – 3:07) 

Okay. That is pretty far-reaching in terms of the patient experience, which again, tees us up for the next question I have for you, which is, help us understand why patient experience has become such a strategic priority for you and for Texas Tech. Well, it is a huge strategic priority for Texas Tech. 

(3:07 – 3:21) 

We believe in the balanced scorecard. So it is an important member of our KPI family that we like to benchmark our organization against. Patient experience is just as important as financial prowess and our revenue cycle. 

(3:22 – 3:52) 

It’s one of the most important KPIs that we have as an organization. And our chartered goal as Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, when it was chartered by the state of Texas, was to serve the people of West Texas and take care of the underserved and the underinsured. However, as the rising cost of healthcare continues to grow, we realized that we need to position ourselves as the healthcare provider of choice for the region. 

(3:52 – 4:05) 

So we need to make ourselves attractive to the commercially insured patients so that those who have a choice choose us. That way we can continue our goal and our mission of taking care of the underserved. That’s an excellent goal. 

(4:05 – 4:21) 

And that’s so great to hear that type of background. And in terms of what the organization as a whole is trying to do to help people. Yes, it’s incredibly important for us not only to just monitor patient experience metrics, but really to use it as the benchmark for change. 

(4:21 – 4:44) 

We want it to be the driver of organizational development, not just some passive report that we use on a regular basis during meetings. I think you might have read through my notes when I wasn’t looking because that was the next question I had for you is, you know, help us understand why this isn’t just one of those situations where, well, we’re checking the box, we’re tracking all this information. You guys actually do something with that data. 

(4:44 – 5:01) 

Yes. It is a key part of every quality meeting, performance improvement meeting, even our finance meeting that we have on a monthly basis with all of our clinical departments. It is a cornerstone of our medical practice to measure our patient experience and collect patient feedback. 

(5:02 – 5:33) 

It’s easy for us to instinctively step over or step around areas that we are familiar with as experts in the medical field. Whereas Joe off the street, you know, John and Jane Doe, who aren’t well versed in medical vernacular or just the overall modern day healthcare journey. It’s important for us to understand where those friction points are, what they are tripping over so that we can better our practice, so that we make a very seamless therapeutic experience for our patients. 

(5:34 – 5:52) 

Because like I said, we want to be the healthcare provider of choice for our demographic and our region, and we can’t do that if we ignore the friction points that our patients are seeing. Yeah. You know, and one other common thing that we bring up within the scope of this webinar is that every single person, all of us, we are patients. 

(5:52 – 6:09) 

How does that come into play with how you do what you do best? I think about my family. As a new father, I want to make sure that my wife and my daughter have the best experience that they can while going through their medical journey. And I think about that with every patient interaction. 

(6:10 – 6:42) 

So when I read a survey comment from someone who is expressing dissatisfaction or raising concern, feels like they may have fallen through the cracks, I think about my own family and my own experience and think, what would it be like if I were in their shoes? So we, as an organization, try to prioritize that. Try to look at ourselves as the patient, not the healthcare provider. So we want to better our practice so that we give the experience that we would want for our patient or for our family members to our patients, guests, and visitors. 

(6:42 – 6:47) 

That’s excellent. I love to hear that, especially from someone at your level doing what you do. That’s so fantastic to hear. 

(6:47 – 6:53) 

If I ever move to Texas, I know where I’m headed. Come to Lubbock, Amarillo, Midland, and Odessa. Excellent. 

(6:54 – 7:32) 

All right, so another question for you, just with regard to this, kind of this wider scope of patient feedback, how do you think about the connection between patient feedback, your organization’s reputation, and actual growth for Texas Tech? Oh, of course. So when it comes to growth for Texas Tech, which I think is the first part of the question I’m going to tackle, we truly lean in on reputation management and our online presence. Because when you think of Texas Tech physicians, Texas Tech University Health Science Center, or Texas Tech in general, we want you to have that feeling of trust and that you’re going to be cared for. 

(7:33 – 7:54) 

And the first step that a consumer has with Texas Tech might be our online reputation. And we want them to come through the door with trust already in hand and not something that we have to earn. We want to have that trust already in hand so that we can build upon that and provide an even more positive experience. 

(7:54 – 8:12) 

Growth starts with trust. Word of mouth is a key component of our marketing strategy. All right, well, the next question I have for you is, you know, what did your technology landscape look like prior to this partnership? Because of our geographical region, it’s easy for our organization to be siloed. 

(8:12 – 8:42) 

It was so siloed, in fact, that our Midland and Odessa campus had their own instance of Cerner, our Lubbock campus had a separate instance of Cerner, and our Amarillo campus even had their own contract with Allscripts. So because of our landscape, it was very easy for us to be siloed. And as a matter of fact, the only platform that was universal across our organization were our patient experience platforms. 

(8:43 – 8:55) 

Before I joined Texas Tech, we used PressGamy because that’s what we thought we needed to do. That was considered to be the gold standard of patient experience serving. We were checking that box. 

(8:55 – 9:21) 

After I came on board, we looked for a vendor that would provide a more streamlined process for us to collect patient feedback and avoid collecting digital dust on our patient comments. And that’s what we were looking for in an enterprise partner. And that’s what we got in a product like Social Client, where we could collect patient feedback instantaneously and do something about it. 

(9:22 – 9:52) 

I’m a firm believer in the service recovery paradox. Have you heard of the… I think I have an idea, but for those watching, help us all understand what you’re thinking about. So the service recovery paradox essentially boils down to oftentimes if a negative interaction with an entity can be corrected and addressed within a timely manner, you’re more likely to create a loyal customer than you would if there were nothing to go wrong. 

(9:52 – 10:32) 

If the experience was perfect and therapeutic from beginning to end, you’re likely to have a lifelong patient. But if something were to go wrong and you have a way to capture that patient feedback, do something about it, act on it, correct it, then the chances of that patient coming back and talking positively about your organization skyrocket. So we believe that if we can collect our patient feedback, make sure that those who may fall through the cracks get addressed and taken care of, that we can hear them do something and avoid that digital dust on patient comments that we were getting previously. 

(10:32 – 10:57) 

We don’t want our survey data to come back a month later after the visit had already taken place. We want to know what happened, when it happened, and what we can do to make it better. And that’s such a crucial piece to understand too, because I’ve spoken with individuals at these larger organizations like Texas Tech who have said, you know, we actually have a little bit of concern about asking for feedback from our patients. 

(10:57 – 11:16) 

We’re worried that that might hurt our online reputation. We’re worried about the types of negative responses we might get. But from what you’re saying, it sounds like it’s much better to, so to speak, risk that because you end up being able to benefit so much more off of how you can remedy those moments of friction that are likely few and far between. 

(11:16 – 11:30) 

And we’re not perfect. We know that when there’s people interacting with people, friction points are bound to occur. As an organization as large as ours, we understand that sometimes a patient may fall through the cracks and we hope that doesn’t happen. 

(11:30 – 12:00) 

Our goal is to prevent those from happening. But when they do, we want our patients to feel like they have the voice to speak up. So we love giving them the opportunity, whether it’s post-visit, whether it’s online, we want to give them the opportunity to either be reached out by our patient experience team, or they reach out to us and talk to an advocate so that we can get them taken care of, get their concerns addressed, and make sure that their healthcare journey is as therapeutic as possible. 

(12:00 – 12:31) 

There’s another piece that you touched on that I want to springboard off of. You talked about this aspect of feeling very siloed previously with the previous solution. So how has having this unified platform actually changed the team or changed the way that, you know, each of these different locations or departments collaborate with one another? Well, it gives us the ability to analyze trends, not just at the department or campus or even specialty level, but it allows us to zoom out and look at trends across the entire organization. 

(12:32 – 12:57) 

We want our patient experience enterprise partners to be drivers of change, not just, you know, enterprise partners who can produce a report. We want to leverage the data that we can get to make effective operational changes so that we can continue to grow as a practice. If we’re going to be the healthcare provider of choice for our region, we want to be able to continue to grow. 

(12:58 – 13:34) 

There’s no upper limit to quality or patient experience, and we try to embody that by continuously growing, analyzing our data in real time, enacting operational changes in any opportunity we can so that we can eliminate those friction points and be the best healthcare organization that we can because our patient demographics deserve it. Our region deserves it. And we truly believe that if we can collect this data in real time and analyze what our patients are saying, then we can accomplish our goal. 

(13:35 – 13:44) 

So a data-driven approach, it sounds like. I don’t want to put words in your mouth. A data-driven approach, it sounds like, is what the goal is for Texas Tech to provide the best care possible. 

(13:44 – 14:00) 

Of course, of course. Data, our industry as healthcare professionals is moving towards a data-driven society, to say. We are collecting so much data on a daily basis that sometimes we don’t know what to do with it. 

(14:00 – 14:32) 

However, luckily, the platform with Social Quorum does make it easy to interpret and read, and it’s a very user-friendly platform that we can truly, it truly makes my job easier when it comes to analyzing those trends and taking care of our patients. But we are becoming more data-driven. We don’t want to make decisions that aren’t backed up by data so that we want to be able to support our patients and really enhance our clinical quality. 

(14:33 – 14:57) 

And we can do that by collecting our data, analyzing trends, and improving our operations when we see that there’s a trend occurring. What would you liken it to in those instances where an organization maybe is doing the job of collecting data, right, they’re checking the box, but they’re letting a lot of it collect that digital dust, like you said. They’re not really doing much with it. 

(14:57 – 15:21) 

What is that like? What would you liken that to? Oh, that’s a good question. I would liken it to, I’m a big football fan, and I grew up in Texas, so football is embedded in my blood. And obviously as a Texas Tech alumni, I’m very proud of our Red Raiders and their performance this year beating up on BYU and University of Utah. 

(15:23 – 15:44) 

But I would liken it to football. If you have an offense that can’t run the ball and all the data is showing that it’s your left guard and you’re not doing anything about that, then you’re just essentially saying that you’re okay with mediocrity. And as an organization, we’re not okay with that because we have people’s lives in our hands. 

(15:45 – 16:07) 

We want to make sure that we are providing the highest quality of healthcare. And if you aren’t leveraging that data to maximize your throughput and increase your quality, then you’re putting patients in harm’s way. Our physicians take a medical oath to do no harm. 

(16:07 – 16:28) 

And I believe that healthcare professionals, even healthcare administrators, by extension, should have that exact same oath. And if you’re not able to enact on areas of friction, then you are putting patients in harm’s way. And I think you have an obligation in your role as a healthcare leader. 

(16:29 – 16:51) 

Whether you’re taking care of patients or not, you’re indirectly impacting patient care, and you should uphold that same oath that our physicians are held to. And using that data in such a smart way seems like a great way to start doing that if you aren’t already. We’re following industry trends and we’re looking into leveraging AI to analyze our trends, our patient comments. 

(16:52 – 17:05) 

I’m a big believer in qualitative data over quantitative data. And so are our physicians. If you’re looking to increase physician engagement when it comes to patient experience, share with them what their patients are saying. 

(17:05 – 17:27) 

They don’t care if you give them a one star or a five star, or they don’t care what color dot you fill in on a survey. They want to know what their patients say. And that is the number one way that we’ve been able to increase physician engagement is by increasing and essentially streamlining the pipeline of patient comments to our providers. 

(17:28 – 17:58) 

And that has enhanced our organizational messaging and culture 10 times just by doing so. And so we’re leveraging AI, but personally, I still like laying hands on each patient comment. That’s one of my favorite things to do at the end of the day is just start looking at what our patients are saying, read their comments, because it helps keep me as a patient experience leader with a finger on the pulse of what our patients are experiencing. 

(17:59 – 18:36) 

Not just when I go see my PCP in our internal medicine clinic down the hall from my office, but I like to know what everyone is experiencing across the board. And whether it’s in our Amarillo campus or one of our regional clinics in a satellite small rural community in Seminole, Texas, I want to make sure all of our patients’ voices feel heard. And that’s such a crucial piece because sometimes if we, as patients, don’t have that opportunity, what are we left with? We’re left with maybe an online review experience, which maybe isn’t sufficient to voice some of the concerns that we have about our care. 

(18:36 – 18:59) 

Usually when people leave an online review unprompted, they’re either very upset or they’re incredibly pleased. So you get a duality of the experiences. And what I like about the reputation management tool that y’all offer is you’re able to capture a lot of, a lot more people who wouldn’t feel the need to go leave a Google review. 

(18:59 – 19:21) 

It’s definitely enlightened our patients, our prospective patients. It’s really increased our growth opportunities as well because reputation management is the cheapest tool when it comes to marketing and patient recruitment. If I’m moving to the West Texas region and I need a PCP, the first thing I’m gonna do is Google PCP near me. 

(19:21 – 19:50) 

And I’m hoping that because of our positive experiences that our patients are having, that our PCPs are gonna be right there at the top. And from there, it leads to referrals to our specialists in-house and just increases our reputation within the region. I imagine it makes jobs easier for those in like the marketing departments at Texas Tech, right? It makes it easier for them to get that message of this is an excellent care that you can have and it’s nearby. 

(19:51 – 19:59) 

By the way, go look at our reviews. They’ll tell you and it’s the patients telling you, right? It’s other patients just like you who had a great experience. Exactly. 

(20:00 – 20:06) 

And to be quite honest, I don’t wanna get anything wrong. I love our folks in the marketing department. They’re some of the best people. 

(20:06 – 20:20) 

They’re salt of the earth. I love them to death. One of our previous marketing directors, when I told them that we wanted to get into the reputation management market, they have previously tried and failed. 

(20:21 – 20:42) 

COVID came around and they lost the ability to contract with a partner due to budget cuts. But when we look to re-engage an enterprise partner for reputation management, our marketing team told the patient experience team, it’s like, you won’t see a return on your investment in two years. You won’t be able to get anything implemented in two years. 

(20:43 – 21:00) 

They’re like, this won’t be successful. However, luckily to the wonderful implementation team members of yours, we had the product implemented and running in less than two months. And we saw a 264% increase in our Google reviews. 

(21:00 – 21:19) 

And we were able, as members of the patient experience team, to go back to our marketing team members and really brag about our success. And it’s been fantastic ever since. We’ve gone through a couple of different large technology changes. 

(21:19 – 21:35) 

We’re actually currently transitioning from Cerner to Epic. And then our regional campuses will soon be on the same EMR platform as well. So we, as an organization, are moving towards a unified platform and a shared experience. 

(21:36 – 22:06) 

And the trailblazing software to do that was our patient experience software. Because that was the first technology within our technology stack that was across our entire enterprise, outside of like HR systems. But our first ancillary technology outside of our HR system was our patient experience vendors and our enterprise partners. 

(22:07 – 22:19) 

And that really blazed the trail for us to position ourselves to be on the same EMR and I think that Texas Tech is going to be a better practice because of it. I believe it. I believe it. 

(22:19 – 22:40) 

And you touched earlier on the use of AI. I’m curious, are you using AI in your daily workflow? How are you using it to understand? I know, like you said, you like to get hands-on those actual reviews from patients. How are you using AI to perceive more of those trends at scale? Of course, we leverage AI in every opportunity we can. 

(22:40 – 22:55) 

And a lot of it comes with trend analysis. We love the ability to save time. Like you said, I still love to lay hands on each survey and take a look at those patient comments, which it is a lot because of the scope of our practice. 

(22:57 – 23:32) 

But any enhancer that we can leverage AI for is going to save time and allow us to step around things that others may trip on. It’s a great way for us to review our data quickly so that if there is a real-time change that needs to be made, it helps us innovate with ideas to implement those changes. And also with AI, it allows a very comprehensive scope of what may work and what may not. 

(23:32 – 24:19) 

So if there is a roadblock that we may not see in our current workflow, AI, and it allows us to be prepared for potential roadblocks or areas that we could avoid in delays and the mishaps that may occur with enterprise projects. So it sounds like what Texas Tech is a proponent of is not just saying, all right, here’s an AI tool, let’s throw that at a problem, but rather using it in conjunction with your own efforts and saying, well, let’s be a team here and let’s identify if there’s any opportunities for growth or change or improvement that we may not be seeing. So one of the comments that we’re getting a lot recently from our patients is related to call center performance. 

(24:19 – 24:55) 

We have an in-house call center and it still takes care of our patient scheduling and it is the primary digital front door for our patients. And right now, we’re having a staffing problem where we can’t get enough bodies and enough butts and seats to answer these phone calls. So we’re looking to implement something like agentic AI within our call center to help be a staff extender, not to replace staff, but to help amplify and enhance our patient experience into this primary digital front door. 

(24:55 – 25:19) 

We push patients through our call centers and our patient portal as much as possible. But because of our regional demographics, we still have a lot of people in rural communities who are very anti-AI. And we want to make sure that we implement something like agentic AI to be as thoughtful and as thorough as possible because this project has to be implemented perfectly. 

(25:20 – 25:42) 

There’s no room for imperfection when it comes to implementing AI that’s patient interacting. It’s okay for there to be a couple of bumps and bruises along the way when it’s AI implemented for internal use between our faculty, staff, our providers and nurses. But when it’s something that we’re going to have interact with our patients, there’s really no room for error. 

(25:42 – 26:19) 

So we’re going to be looking to implement a product like agentic AI in our call centers to help enhance and amplify our staffing workforce. But because of our patient comments that we’re already getting on our surveys and our Google reviews within reputation management, there’s already people who are apprehensive towards AI. So we want to make sure those patients are taken care of by making sure we have plenty of checkpoints and back entry points for our patients who don’t want to talk with agentic AI and use that to really improve the patient experience. 

(26:20 – 26:47) 

Because I’m already listening to our patients and they’re already a little apprehensive towards AI. And if we could use this to enhance our operations and truly make our scheduling throughput more streamlined, then I think it’ll be a more enhanced experience. And hopefully we’ll see some good returns on our surveys and our Google reviews when we do implement this. 

(26:47 – 27:18) 

It’s on our project roadmap and we’re really looking forward to it. From a patient experience perspective, I may be the biggest roadblock right now just because I want to make sure our patients have a very positive experience when interacting with AI. So Samuel, based on what you’re telling me about how Texas Tech is going about implementing AI, this agentic experience, it really does sound like you have your patient’s best interests in mind, that you’re really concerned about what their concerns are, but you’re trying to meet them in some new ways that are scalable. 

(27:18 – 27:28) 

But that also might help them realize, look, we’re going to underline this point that we care about our patients. We want to meet you where you’re at. We want to help provide you with the best care possible. 

(27:29 – 27:41) 

Oh, of course, of course. You know, one of the issues that we’re having in West Texas is staffing, and I’m sure that’s not unique to our region. It’s definitely experienced across the board. 

(27:41 – 28:14) 

And we’re hoping that AI can help enhance and extend our staff’s ability to not only provide great customer service, but accurate service. Those two need to go hand in hand with each other. And we’re hoping that when you have systems like an AI coach who can provide real time information to our our staff to make sure that they’re not only just taking care of our patients in a very kind way, they’re doing it accurately because that’s going to go a long way in terms of service recovery. 

(28:14 – 28:20) 

It’ll hopefully won’t put me out of a job. But it’s right. Like you said, it’s a it’s an employee extender, right? Exactly. 

(28:20 – 28:35) 

That’s what we’re hoping it to to be within our medical enterprise. We’re still very old fashioned in the way that we do things in West Texas. I remember at an MGM conference, someone told me that health care is usually about 13 years behind the curve when it comes to technology. 

(28:36 – 29:30) 

So we’re hoping that by implementing some of these new modern day services and products and technologies that a lot of our enterprise partners have been able to provide us that we can truly get to the cutting edge of technology and be at the forefront of innovation, change and just provide the best care for our patients as possible. I think that segues beautifully into this final point, which is, you know, how do you see data and these connected platforms reshaping health care over the next few years? And specifically, you know, where is Texas Tech headed as an enterprise partner? Data is going to be at the forefront of every conversation, every discussion. When talking about products, we want to know what data can be provided, what data can be collected, when talking about change, we want to see the data behind those change. 

(29:30 – 29:46) 

We feel like if we’re going to be making informed decisions, we need accurate and trusted data to do so. So data is going to be at the forefront of our organization. We’re going to have to have a very healthy relationship with data. 

(29:46 – 29:59) 

We’re going to be married to data because that is where our information for effective change is going to come from. We want to be able to analyze our patient comments from that qualitative data. 

Patient feedback provides direct insight into the patient experience and highlights areas where processes may create friction. Healthcare organizations can use this information to identify improvement opportunities, improve service recovery efforts, and make informed operational decisions that enhance both patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes. 

Healthcare consumers increasingly rely on online reviews and ratings when selecting providers. A strong reputation helps build trust before a patient ever visits a facility. Effective reputation management also helps organizations better understand patient sentiment and improve their overall patient experience strategy. 

Organizations can move beyond simply collecting survey responses by regularly analyzing trends, identifying recurring concerns, and using insights to drive operational improvements. When patient experience data becomes part of routine decision-making, it can support continuous improvement across the organization. 

AI can help healthcare organizations analyze large volumes of feedback, identify trends more quickly, and support operational efficiency. Many organizations are exploring AI as a way to enhance service delivery while maintaining a patient-centered approach and ensuring appropriate human oversight. 

Positive patient experiences contribute to stronger online reputations, increased trust, and greater patient loyalty. These factors can help healthcare organizations attract new patients, strengthen community relationships, and support long-term growth initiatives. 

Service recovery refers to the actions taken when a patient experiences a problem or concern during their care journey. Addressing issues quickly and effectively can improve trust, strengthen patient relationships, and demonstrate an organization’s commitment to delivering exceptional care. 

Any healthcare organization that interacts with patients can benefit from reputation management, including hospitals, clinics, physician groups, specialty practices, academic medical centers, and multi-site healthcare networks. Strong reputation management helps organizations understand patient perceptions and improve trust in their services. 

Patient-centered cultures are built by actively listening to patient feedback, encouraging continuous improvement, using data to inform decisions, and ensuring every team member understands their role in delivering a positive patient experience. Leaders who incorporate patient feedback into organizational strategy can create meaningful and lasting improvements.