Does your hospital have a goal that leadership wants to achieve by the year 2020?

We recently surveyed over 1,000 companies from various industries and found that just over half have a clearly defined 2020 goal. When it came to organizations from the healthcare industry, we discovered that this number was much higher—64% of healthcare professionals indicating that their company has a 2020 goal or objective. Why is there so much more focus around establishing 2020 goals in this industry? With the recent passing of the Affordable Care Act, reimbursement rates are now explicitly tied to the patient experience, driving more focus and attention on improving HCAHPS scores and overall patient satisfaction. This has fast become one of the key results that hospitals and health systems are concentrating on—and a sentiment many of our hospital clients all share.

In order to ensure fulfillment of these 2020 goals, mostly around patient satisfaction and financial goals, hospital leaders from across the nation have been looking at ways to transform their culture so that the patient experience is at the center of all activities. Unfortunately, many have not gotten the traction they need, largely due to the length that traditional culture change takes. In their 2015 The State of the Workplace Culture report, Workforce magazine found that true culture change takes 2.6 years to occur on average. For hospital leaders with culture change initiatives in place, this puts many of their 2020 goals in jeopardy of being fulfilled. Leaders are looking for faster and more efficient ways of transforming culture and getting traction around improving the patient experience.

We’ve found that the best way to transform culture, across all levels of a hospital—leadership, physicians, nurses, staff—is through the power of changing beliefs. Oftentimes, change initiatives only focus on actions to make an impact. These usually come in the form of new checklists, protocols, ways to measure and report, and so forth. While many of these are purposeful and relative to the achievement of a key result, they are merely transitional and temporary. To get true, transformational change, a process of changing beliefs must be employed. When people shift their beliefs, a change that is long-lasting and sustainable is formed. And true, transformational change takes only as long as it takes to change a belief.

Are you looking for a way to truly transform your organization so that you can achieve the success your company is looking for by year 20/20? Download this success snapshot!

See how they’re doing it by 20/20