Speakers

Lisa Allen, Ph.D. joined Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) in September 2014 as the first Chief Patient Experience Officer. In this role she has oversight and responsibility for enhancing and continually improving the overall experience of patients and families by coaching, utilization of best practices, transparency, reporting, and system collaboration. She focuses on person and family centered care and engagement. Her position sits within the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. Her team consists of Coaches, Advocates, Volunteer Services, and Patient and Guest Services.

She has her Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology and Community Medicine, a Green Belt in Lean, and is a Certified Executive Coach. Dr. Allen was named in the Beckers Hospital Review list as “130 women hospital and health system leaders to know” for 2015 and 2016.

With a focus on providing exceptional customer service and delivering the highest quality care, Mr. Gierlinger is responsible for building an engaging, innovative and collaborative culture that drives organizational growth and customer loyalty through the customer experience.
He came to Northwell Health from the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit where he served as vice president, hospitality and service culture, responsible for creating a superior and consistent service experience for patients, visitors and employees.  Mr. Gierlinger worked closely with leadership to drive culture change around improving the customer experience in every encounter across the system.  Prior to that, he was administrator, hospitality services, for Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, responsible for all aspects of non-clinical operations, the Wellness & Integrative Health Center, retail shops and café, and the customer experience.
Mr. Gierlinger began his career in the luxury hotel business, holding a series of leadership positions with the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.  He played a key role in the openings of several Ritz-Carlton hotels in Germany, Japan, Indonesia and the US, responsible for executing and implementing Ritz-Carlton service standards, training staff, and leading teams of trainers.
Mr. Gierlinger is a member of the Association of Patient Experience, The Leader’s Board for Service Excellence, and The Beryl Institute.
He received a bachelor’s degree in hospitality business administration from the Bavaria Hotel Management Academy, Altoetting, Germany.

Alan Dubovsky is the Chief Patient Experience Officer for Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles, California.

In his role, Alan is responsible for the facilitation of all patient experience strategy and operations improvements in the inpatient, ambulatory, emergency, and ancillary areas for the health system.

Alan joined Cedars-Sinai in November, 2016, with 15 years focused on healthcare patient experience improvement. Most recently, Alan was with Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, Georgia, serving as the Director of Operations over the entire ambulatory enterprise. In that role, Alan was responsible for the departments of patient experience, physician engagement, special constituent and international patient programs, referral management, education and training, and leadership and talent development.

Alan completed his undergraduate degree in Business Administration at the University of Georgia and his Executive Master in Business Administration at Emory University.

Sara Toomey is Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Managing Director of the Center of Excellence for Pediatric Quality Measurement and is the physician lead for all patient experience efforts at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is an academic general pediatrician and health services researcher. She conducts research that aims to measure the quality of pediatric care, demonstrate the association between quality measures and healthcare outcomes, and develop interventions to improve outcomes. Among her accomplishments, she is one of the lead developers of the Child Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers & Systems Survey, known as Child HCAHPS. She received her BA from Holy Cross, MPhil in Social Anthropology and MSc in Comparative Social Policy from Oxford University, MD and MPH from Harvard, and was a fellow in the Harvard-wide Pediatric Health Services Research Fellowship.

For over twenty years, Lara has led hospital leaders and physicians through culture change resulting in the highest levels of engagement, service, and operational excellence. Lara is currently the SVP, Chief Patient Experience and Strategy Officer at JPS Health Network in Ft. Worth, Texas. Prior to joining JPS, Lara spent 10 years working as a coach for a large healthcare consulting firm. She has worked with thousands of hospital leaders and physicians at over 150 organizations, which included small rural hospitals, large for-profit and not-for-profit health care systems, and academic medical centers. Her concentration on building and sustaining a culture of excellence has led to organizations achieving their highest outcomes. Lara has a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications/Public Relations and a Master’s Degree in Healthcare Administration. She is also the author of a book titled, Believe in the Journey of Your Dreams.

Kathy Denton has been a facilitator and leader of change and performance improvement for over 25 years in both the private and public  sectors.  The last 18 years she has been at MD Anderson Cancer Center, with the last four years focusing on improving the patient experience.  She has been instrumental in the development of the Patient Experience Program at MD Anderson Cancer Center.  She has a Six Sigma Black Belt; is a Certified Manager of Quality and Organizational Excellence and is a Certified Professional for Healthcare Quality.  She also serves on the Texas A&M University - College of Education and Human Development - Advisory Board.    

Christine’s entire career has been dedicated to women’s and children’s health. She is currently the Director of the Office of Patient Experience at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, where role is to develop and implement strategies that ensure patients and their families have an extraordinary experience.  Since starting at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford four years ago, she has grown the department from a staff of 1 to staff of 25. 

Christine is ultimately responsible for the implementation and sustainability of service standards, gathering patient feedback, patient navigation, corporate partnerships, and many other experience improvement initiatives.  She has been an advocate and the voice of our patients and families during the planning and execution of a 500,000 square foot hospital expansion set to complete in 2017.

Prior to Packard, Christine spent 25 years in the medical device field. She has served as a Vice President of Marketing and Sales and has also worked in strategy and business development. Christine is on various leadership committees and also served two terms as President of the non-profit Professional Women’s Healthcare Alliance (PWHA).

Christine holds Bachelor of Arts and Master of Business Administration degrees.

Brian obtained a dual master’s degree from Xavier University. After finishing a fellowship in Hospital Administration at University of Illinois at Chicago Medical center Brian joined Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation as Practice Manager for Women’s Health. After four years he was recruited to be COO of Olean Medical Group, a 33 provider multispecialty group practice in Olean, NY and served as COO for four years and then CEO for a year and a half. In 2007 Brian came to Vanderbilt University Medical Center first as Administrator for the Vanderbilt Eye Institute and currently as Director of Patient Access and Experience. In his current system level role he oversees both strategy and operations for improving the Patient Experience with particular emphasis in ensuring efficient access to meet our client’s needs.

Amy Searls has over twenty years of leadership experience. She currently is Executive Director, Service Excellence at University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. Originally from the Chicago area, she has held positions as Cancer Center Liaison and Director of Guest Services, and Director of Service Excellence with Banner Health and Providence Hospitals, Columbia, South Carolina. She has helped develop and implement many educational and training programs and resources designed to positively impact the patient and family experience. She has extensive background in many aspects of clinical and non-clinical operations in hospital and ambulatory settings. She’s been recognized for delivering exceptional performance related to the patient experience. She has helped develop and successfully achieve service strategies and operational objectives through innovative planning, service, department networking, effective problem solving, vision and leadership. Her philosophy, which emphasizes mission and purpose in what we do in health care, has helped her successfully impact the patient, guest and team experience.

In the role of senior director, Ms. Cangiano leads patient experience measurement operations, reporting and performance improvement across the Northwell Health enterprise.  Under her direction, the patient experience analytics and performance improvement team is utilizing patient feedback to understand what defines and drives customer experiences.  In addition, Ms. Cangiano is responsible for identifying, developing and implementing technology solutions and supporting processes that enhance patient and customer experience. 

Previously, Ms. Cangiano led the development of Northwell’s workforce engagement measurement methodology and strategy.   As a Talent leader, she worked on large scale transformation efforts including leader development and performance management.

Additional roles at Northwell include director of Health System Operations and program manager for System Orthopedic Services.  Prior to her time at Northwell, Ms. Cangiano worked for 10 years in behavioral health settings in clinical, research and administrative capacities.

Ms. Cangiano received her BA in psychology from Georgetown University, her MS in psychology from Saint Louis University, and her MPH with a concentration in health services management through the executive program at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

James Grayson took advantage of early retirement from a career in air traffic control to start a second chapter. Leveraging his lifelong passion for aviation and the systems that allow it to be safe and efficient, he is pushing a new industry to greater heights. Serving as the West Cancer Center’s Administrative Chief of Staff, he works within executive leadership to power the organization’s reliability efforts. From his unique position in the org chart, James works across all departments to create and sustain interdependencies that enable a highly-reliable patient experience from all perspectives: safety, continuity of care, quality interactions with providers, scheduling – the list goes on.

James, 50, lives in Collierville, Tennessee with his wife of nearly 30 years, Kelly. They have two adult daughters: Amelia who is attending graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Abigail who is an undergrad at Rice University in Houston. James and Kelly love British television, travel, and finding their next great meal. As a Colonel in the Commemorative Air Force, James maintains his love of flight and still looks skyward at the sound of every plane.

Susan Osborne is Registered Nurse with over 30 years of experience in Leadership and has coached Senior Executives, Hospital leaders and Doctors for over 15 years with great results in service, people and quality, growth and financial Pillars. She started with CHRISTUS Health Dec 7, 2016 relocating to the Dallas area from Atlanta, Georgia where she held the position of Vice President for Patient Experience for Piedmont Healthcare. Susan worked as an Executive Coach for the Studer Group for 5 Years so well versed in the Must Haves. She is passionate about improving both the Patient and Associate experience. Susan has proven that staff retention is the key to an organizations success. Under her leadership, she decreased RN turnover in critical care from 34 percent to 9 percent within a 2-year period at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite. Susan is the author of several articles including: Recruitment; Rewarding and retaining your staff.

She helped Piedmont Healthcare become the 2nd organization in the US to provide physician transparency of patient satisfaction results. She was successful in moving ED overall performance as well. Piedmont Atlanta Hospital ED was selected as Press Ganey ED Success Story for 2015.

She is a talented presenter and facilitator who brings fun into the work place. On a personal note, she is Married to Jeff Osborne for 25 years and has two grown up Children Katie & Mckenna. She also has 2 more four legged children - dogs Sadie and Kiki.

Please give a warm welcome to Susan Osborne who will be speaking on Communicating Compassionately through Bedside Shift Report.

Isaac Villanueva is the UI UX Design Manager for Software Design and Development at Stanford Health Care. In this role he leverages a patient centered approach to design and improve features within the patient facing app MyHealth. MyHealth is an online tool that provides patients with instant and secure access to their health information. 

Mary Song, MPH, is the manager of the Patient & Family Partner Program (PFPP) and Volunteer Resources at Stanford Health Care. PFPP is made up of over 120 patient and family volunteers who provide the patient and caregiver perspective as speakers, advisory council members, committee members, or participants of improvement events. Mary onboards and trains new Patient and Family Partners, supports existing and creation of new Patient & Family Advisory Councils, and coordinates all requests from the organization for patient and family engagement. Mary also oversees a volunteer program of over 1,300 volunteers per year across Stanford’s hospital and clinics. Mary received her Bachelors in Community Health and Biopsychology from Tufts University and Masters in Public Health from Tufts School of Medicine. 

Mary spends time meeting with hospital and clinic leaders as well as Medical School faculty to do education and strategic planning around how to better engage patient & family partners in improvement work, facility design, and curriculum building. Prior to this role, she has 10 years of experience in accreditation, quality, and process improvement, and is passionate about integrating the voices of patients and families in how hospitals plan, implement, and evaluate delivery of care. 

Dawn Williams is experienced in consulting with organizations across a variety of industries to assess and improve consumer experience. Her recent work has focused on employee engagement and patient experience improvement in healthcare. She joined Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 2015. Prior to working with Planned Parenthood, Ms. Williams worked in professional roles for over a decade at the Cleveland Clinic, most recently holding the position of Consultant in the Patient Experience Advisory Group, a revenue generating consulting team embedded within the Office of Patient Experience. As a founding member of the consulting team, Ms. Williams was responsible for infrastructure development, client relationship management and project management of client deliverables. She has worked with more than 25 organizations in a variety of consumer-focused industries on organizational culture development, employee engagement initiatives, best practice implementation for experience improvement, service excellence training and patient/consumer experience sustainability. Ms. Williams has a Master’s of Business Administration from Tiffin University and a Bachelor of the Arts in Applied Psychology from Franklin University in Ohio. She is also a Certified Patient Experience Professional (CPXP), a professional designation offered through the Patient Experience Institute (PXI).

Lee Ann has spent her career providing digital and marketing services to a myriad of Healthcare clients to optimize opportunities and initiatives for maximum return. As a strategic thinker with a keen business acumen, Lee Ann develops and drives big ideas that produce revenue and integrated solutions incorporating strategy, technology and insights as the foundation – resulting in solutions that deliver compelling patient and staff engagement.Her work has spanned a variety of industries including Agency/Marketing Services and Healthcare, working on prestigious brands that include: BCBS, Aetna, Baylor Scott and White, Tenet Healthcare, Concentra, United Healthcare, St. Luke’s, CVS, TLC Vision, Epsilon, Acxiom and Ogilvy ... to name a few

Shawn Nason started The Nason Group, where the focus is to help their partners meet their consumers where they are at to better inform how they approach current and future products and services.

While he has deep passion for healthcare the tools they employ to impact healthcare are universal and accessible in the context of any organization that wants to join them on the journey towards consumer-centered innovation.He has learned through his career that deeply listening to the consumer is a key tenet of successful organizations and a bold move for leaders to undertake.

His challenge to both small and large organizations is to evaluate deeply your commitment to the consumer. If you aren’t where you feel you need to be, go find someone (it doesn’t have to be The Nason Group) to help you put the consumer at the center of the products and services you offer. Consumers – whether they be direct purchasers or in a B2B environment are asking…demanding more of their relationships. Putting the consumer at the center of your business model will ensure your ability to adapt, adjust, and perform as a business.

Bob is CTO and co-founder of Mist, a pioneer in smart wireless networking for the smart device era. 

Bob started his career in wireless at Metricom (Ricochet wireless network) developing and deploying wireless mesh networks across the country to connect the first generation of Internet browsers. Following Metricom, Bob co-founded Airespace, a start-up focused on helping enterprises manage the flood of employees bringing unlicensed Wi-Fi technology into their businesses. Following Cisco’s acquisition of Airespace in 2005, Bob became the VP/CTO of Cisco enterprise mobility and drove mobility strategy and investments in the wireless business (e.g. Navini, Cognio, ThinkSmart, Phunware, Wilocity, Meraki). He also drove industry standards such as Hot Spot 2.0 and market efforts such as Cisco’s Connected Mobile Experience. He holds more than 15 patents