Patient experience is not an entirely new idea, but at this year’s HIMSS18 conference in Las Vegas it will be more important than ever.

The benefits are becoming more and more clear: better outcomes and higher satisfaction scores, reduced readmissions and, when done properly, lower costs to both hospitals and consumers.

Taken together, hospitals can those upsides into a distinct competitive advantage over regional providers not deploying such forward-looking tactics.

So it’s no surprise that sessions and forums will highlight challenges, innovations, and the big promise of patient experience. There are literally far too many sessions to include them all. Here is our roundup of highlights:

Scaling a Customized Patient Experience
Clinical excellence will only get a hospital so far when more and more hospitals are focusing on experience and patients are beginning to expect it. Speakers will share a case study on creating human-driven strategies with modern technologies to customize the patient experience by analyzing data in EHRs and surveys to inform future direction of what began as a pilot program.
Speakers: Sanjay Shah, Director of Strategic Innovation, Dignity Health ;Royal Tuthill, Chief Transformation Officer, Docent Health
When: 8:30-9:30 a.m. March 6
Where: Venetian Palazzo B

Engaging and Empowering Patients: Redesigning Patient Care
This session will focus on how Sinai Hospital of Baltimore implemented a care coordination platform to tie together a virtual care team to achieve a 350 percent reduction in in-patient transfers. Other notable achievements include a 100 percent completion of discharge follow-ups within 48 hours, more than 50 percent reduction in readmission and 15 percent reduction in no-shows.
Speakers: Jonathan Ringo, President and COO, Sinai; Trish Birch, Senior Vice President, Cognizant Technologies
When: 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. March 6
Where: Venetian Sands ShowRoom

Changing the Channel: Transforming Interactive Patient Entertainment
Dreaming up big changes is one thing. Leading them from RFP through implementation is another entirely. This session will focus on how Henry Ford united its organizations to discover, acquire and deploy new technologies that standardized the patient experience across multiple hospitals.
Speaker: Vanessa Mona, Director, Henry Ford Health System
When: 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. March 6
Where: Venetian Galileo 904

Next Generation Patient Experience
Pediatric patients present their own unique challenges and opportunities to harness technology. This session will take a look at to engage children and their families in compelling and, perhaps equally as important, fun ways.
Speaker: Harun Rashid, CIO, Akron Children's Hospital
When: 11:30-11:50 a.m. March 6
Where: Sands Convention Center Hall G Booth 11657 LEAD

NEMT Powered by Lyft
Several hospitals have inked deals with ride services Lyft or Uber to help patients get to medical appointments. Lyft offers an API that partners can use to build services for specific patient populations. This session will home in on reducing missed appointments for non-emergent visits.
Speaker: Kamil Rodoper, Head of Product, Lyft
When: 12:30-12:50 p.m. March 6
Where: Sands Convention Center Hall G Booth 9900

Establishing and Nurturing a Culture of Innovation: Lessons Learned from Global Disrupters
Few healthcare organizations hold the sway of Cleveland Clinic or Mayo Clinic and that is as true in the patient experience realm as it is hard medical science. The chief information officers of both will discuss how they foster a culture of innovation to create a competitive edge.
Speakers: Edward Marx, CIO, Cleveland Clinic; Christopher Ross, CIO, Mayo Clinic; Claus Duedal Pedersen, Project Manager, Odense University Hospital
When: 1-2 p.m. March 6
Where: Venetian Palazzo G

The Role of Technology in Increasing Access to Care by Reaching Patients Where They Are
Officials from the Neighborhood House Association (NHA) of San Diego and Sharp Medical will discuss how they leverage IT to better meet the needs of underserved and at-risk populations — including a look at how common data points can inform a digital health model.
Speakers: Julie Cowan Novak, Executive Director Nemeth NICU Follow up Clinic, Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women and Newborns; Rudolph Johnson, CEO, NHA of San Diego
When: 2:30-3:30 p.m. March 6
Where: Venetian Lando 4301

Creating Delightful Consumer Experiences: What Can We Learn from Other Industries?
A question on the minds of every technologist and clinician working in healthcare today. This session will take a look at how to answer that by recognizing models that exist outside healthcare to balance high-touch and high-tech.
Speaker: Farzad Azimpour, Director of Health, IDE
When: 8:30-9:30 a.m. March 7
Where: Venetian Marcello 4405

Connected Care IRL (In Real Life)
What would a perfect patient experience look like? Lygeia Ricciardi, a well-known expert, will interview a patient about what works and what does not when engaging with the healthcare system to derive an answer to that question.
Speakers: Lygeia Ricciardi, President, Clear Voice Consulting; Michael Joseph, Founder & CEO, Prime Dimensions
When: 8:30-9:30 a.m. March 7
Where: Venetian Palazzo G

Patients As Consumers: How Leading Providers Are Digitally Transforming Consults
This session will highlight how both UPMC and athenahealth take design practices into account when establishing approaches, concepts and building tools to better meet patient preferences, as well as those of caregivers and family members.
Speakers: Santosh Mohan, Head, “More Disruptions Please” Labs, athenahealth
Rasu Shrestha, Chief Innovation Officer, UPMC, Executive Vice President, UPMC Enterprises
When: 10–11 a.m. March 7
Where: Venetian Marcello 4405

Chief Experience Officer: New Leader Driving Innovation to Transform Healthcare
All this focus on patient experience has given rise to a new healthcare career: that of the Chief Experience Officer. But how are they change agents driving transformation? This speaker from an academic medical center will share her experience using technologies to “reconnect people to purpose.”
Speaker: Sue Murphy Chief Experience and Innovation Officer, University of Chicago Medicine
When: 4–5 p.m. March 7
Where: Venetian Delfino 4002