Sound Physicians is a leading hospitalist organization focused on improving patient experience. They have an entire department dedicated to enhancing quality and satisfaction of care. Their approach is based on best practices from top organizations. They provide tools, education, and resources to physicians on communication skills and patient experience. These include AIDET modules, patient materials, and monthly discussion topics. Physicians are engaged as patient experience champions and receive observation, coaching, and personalized feedback to improve their skills. Sound Physicians has seen impressive results in patient experience from these initiatives across their partner hospitals.

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Hospital Medicine - the way it should be
Sound Physicians Patient Experience Program
In this white paper:
• Sound Physicians’ partnership with leaders in the patient experience of care space
• The PX tools, education and resources Sound Physicans provides its hospitalists
• The impressive results Sound Physicians has seen from its PX program at partner hospitals
Sound Physicians is a leading hospitalist organization focused on driving improvements in the quality, satisfaction and
efficiency of inpatient health care delivery. As the practice of choice for more than 100 hospitals across the country,
Sound Physicians has an entire department dedicated to improving the patient experience of care. Our team is led by
Mark Rudolph, MD, SFHM, VP of Patient Experience and Physician Development for Sound Physicians, as well as Chair of
the Society of Hospital Medicine’s Patient Experience Group. He guides a group of chief hospitalists, hospitalist nurses
and administrative leaders in efforts to enhance the quality and satisfaction of patient care.
Our Patient Experience of Care Philosophy
Our approach is based on the study and implementation of best practices from thought leaders in this space, including
the Beryl Institute, Studer Group, Press Ganey, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. We regularly partner
with such organizations to host webcasts that discuss cutting-edge innovations in the patient experience of care.
Past collaborations have included Quint Studer; Press Ganey; Dr. Atul Gawande, best-selling author of The Checklist
Manifesto; and Dr. Thomas Lee, former CEO of Partners HealthCare, current CMO of Press Ganey, and author of Chaos
and Organization in Medicine. We have developed a library of tools,
education and resources, as well as a strategic training and leadership
program that engages our physicians in offering the best patient care.
PX Tools, Education Resources
• AIDET® Key Communications Modules: All of our providers are
required to complete a suite of 5 web-based learning modules that
address the Studer Group’s AIDET Key Communications. These
modules contain videos produced by Sound Physicians that model
all of the communication behaviors expected of our providers. Using
these resources as a model including customization by our PX team,
we have developed a hospitalist-specific set of communication
interventions that ties back to the Studer Group’s AIDET
fundamentals of communication, in recognition of their
wide-spread use and effectiveness.
• Patient Communication Tools: One intervention we feel strongly
about is that patients deserve materials that name their provider and
explain the hospitalist role. It helps the providers to facilitate proper
introductions and explanations and also is a mechanism for showing
accountability to patients.

2. • PX Monthly Focus: To keep the conversation innovative and
relevant, we have a PX Focus each month that is shared not just
with providers, but with every colleague in the organization.
Topics have included: how to create connection with patients;
reducing the trauma of hospitalization; and the importance of
referring to hospital staff by name. These topics are also used
by our PX Champions as a discussion point at monthly hospitalist
team meetings.
• Manage Up Education: In an effort to take our efforts beyond
the walls of our team, we’ve developed “Manage Up” education
for nursing staff which specifically addresses scenarios where
nursing staff have opportunities to refine questions that may arise
regarding hospitalists. This education is typically completed at
nursing department staff meetings with our PX Champions and
hospitalist RNs.
Engaging Physicians as PX Leaders
• PX Champion: We appoint a PX Champion at every site, who
acts as the team’s liaison to both our partner hospitals and
our organization in our mutual efforts to improve the patient
experience. PX Champions adhere to an explicit set of roles and
responsibilities, one of which is to address the PX Monthly focus
with their colleagues at the monthly hospitalist team meetings.
• Observation and Coaching: We believe that observed
patient encounters serve to raise provider awareness regarding
both opportunities for improvement and also acknowledge
communication strengths. We use our AIDET Key Communications
Tools to outline expectations for providers. We work with the
resources at each site individually to determine who can best
serve as an observer and coach. We also provide training via a
web-based training module for individuals that are appointed to
serve as observers.
• Meaningful Data: Through our observation and coaching, we
are able to provide meaningful data to our hospitalists about
how they can improve. For hospitalists, HCAHPS scores are difficult
to attribute to individual providers, so we focus on offering
personalized feedback -- and we’ve measured how doing so
remarkably transforms performance across hospitals of all
sizes and regions.
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Contact
Email: partnership@soundphysicians.com
Web: www.soundphysicians.com
Phone: (253) 682-6052
03-043014-0001-AB