Bryan Health, a major regional healthcare system with six medical centers, is among the NRC Health partners that have embraced the Human Understanding Metric (HUme) —“Did everyone treat you as a unique person?”

Whether in the clinical or non-clinical setting, the HUme is about three promises: Connect with Me, Listen to Me, and Partner with Me—which is exactly what Bryan Health is setting out to do with its refreshed and personalized patient-care model.

Bryan Health, a Nebraska non-profit health system with more than 6,000 staff members, has focused on caring for patients, educating the next generation of healthcare providers, and continually collaborating to improve how it serves the community. Its statewide networks bring care and treatment directly to rural communities through sophisticated mobile diagnostic and treatment services, specialized heart-care clinics, and telehealth mental health counseling.

Bryan Health’s seven core values aim to connect with patients and view them as real people with real problems. The focus of their core values elevates empathy and aligns with NRC Health’s key concepts of Human Understanding —Connect with Me, Listen to Me, and Partner with Me—which became the basis of refreshing their personalized patient-care model.

“If you look at the foundation of our new model, it starts with communication and relationships,” says Lisa Vail, Chief Nursing Officer and System Vice President of Patient Care Services at Bryan Health. “We believe we can only serve our patients and their needs if we have healthy relationships and positive communication. I see our values as aligning very tightly with our work with NRC Health. We have the same will to understand the unique individuals we serve, know what their experiences are, and improve those experiences to improve patients’ quality of life.”

“ “We believe we can only serve our patients and their needs if we have healthy relationships and positive communication. I see our values as aligning very tightly with our work with NRC Health.”

-Lisa Vail, Chief Nursing Officer and System Vice President of Patient Care Services

To ensure Human Understanding is incorporated into their new patient model, Bryan Health’s leadership made significant systemic changes to integrate the model into the organization’s orientations, leadership and team meetings, staff-recognition programs, job descriptions, and annual reviews. These steps to connect, listen, and partner reinforce reliable ways to build personal connections and rapport over time.

“Our values are front and center with managers, the front line, and patient care,” says Missy Bartels, Director of Critical Care Services—Stroke, Trauma, and Pastoral Care. “They’re very simple core values that make it an everyday occurrence.”

Vail says that as Bryan Health’s leaders looked at NRC Health and how it had revolutionized the concept of Human Understanding, they saw a great deal of synergy and alignment between what Bryan Health already had and what NRC Health offered in education and resources to help healthcare organizations better care for patients, families, and communties.

“Connecting with NRC Health—knowing our partner is in this work, talking the same talk we do, believes the same things we do, and values the same things we do—we knew our work would be made easier by that collaboration and alignment,” Vail says. “To us, personalized care is delivered through positive communication and strong relationships, science and technology, best practices, and alignment with our commitment to equity, and that is the foundation that our personalized model for patient care stands upon.”

Vail said they took that framework and added the “Connect with Me,” “Listen to Me,” and “Partner with Me” dimensions because they believe those behaviors align tightly with Bryan Health’s vision and beliefs. Ultimately, their vision is to elevate quality of life through better health.

“We understand that every single person we care for is a unique individual, which is how we have built our new model, wrapping care around that individual, embracing them, and helping them feel safe within our healthcare system,” Vail says, “Providers find that our new personalized patient care model is our North Star, defining our expectations of what it means to be part of Bryan Health. It helps us know who we are, what we’re doing, and why we’re behind it. Everyone is embracing it completely.”

“Providers find that our new personalized patient care model is our North Star, defining our expectations of what it means to be part of Bryan Health. It helps us know who we are, what we’re doing, and why we’re behind it. Everyone is embracing it completely.”

-Lisa Vail, Chief Nursing Officer and System Vice President of Patient Care Services

A great example of listening beyond just hearing is the creation of Bryan Health’s new April Sampson Cancer Center, a $45 million comprehensive community cancer center opening in March 2024. The construction of this cancer center is the result of conversations across the community about what people need from an organization when there is a cancer diagnosis in their family. The community said they needed improved care coordination and more convenient and personalized care, with Bryan Health’s well-known personal touch as part of the solution. The resulting cancer center is pulling all those services into a single place where they can better serve the community.

Bryan Health also uses active listening by reviewing patient data in their EHR platform to ensure they are delivering quality outcomes and understanding any disparities in the populations they serve in their primary, secondary, and tertiary areas. Listening to what each patient wants and needs helps them drive initiatives for quality improvement in the future.

“Our priorities as an organization have changed,” Vail says. “Our consumer expectations have changed. Our society has changed. And we needed to make sure, both for the folks we serve and our own employee workforce, that we all understand and are listening about any equity issues. All those basic principles are important, no matter who you are within the Bryan Health system. Locally, as we think about equity, we’re ramping up or increasing our focus on our connection and partnership with regional cultural centers, schools, and communities to help address health literacy issues and navigate access barriers.”

For Bryan Health, listening is not just about the patient experience, but relates to the employee experience too. They’re excited about their new personalized patient-care model because of its relatability—everyone wants to be treated uniquely, not just patients. Recognizing this, the organization’s leaders are embracing the new model and walking the walk in the behaviors they want to see among frontline staff, modeling how to respect individuals and manage and work with people who are different from them, who may be challenging, or who have complex family dynamics and differing opinions.

One way Bryan Health puts listening into action is through a new software program called Kudos, which staff can use to send congratulations and thank-you cards. The organization’s leaders specifically added a Connect card, a Listen card, and a Partner card that can be used to acknowledge specific behavior, says Edgar Bumanis, Director of Marketing and Communication. The same cards and images are also used as screensavers on all computer screens. Additionally, they are currently working on “badge buddies” that will allow everyone at the organization to have something on them at all times to remind them of the system’s vision to connect, listen, and partner with its patients.

“High employee engagement goes hand-in-hand with patient experience,” says Bartels. “Those building blocks together make the patient experience just skyrocket.”

“We know families have to be involved in conversations around helping our patients get better,” Vail says. “But as their providers, we also need to make sure we’re hearing the patient’s voice—and recognize that even though their voices may be not as loud as family members’ at times, they’re as important.”

Bryan Health’s leaders want the organization to partner with each individual and work toward reaching out in the ways that fit best with their lifestyle—whether that’s text, email, or a phone call—to ensure they are delivering a personalized approach for each person. “We want to hear the voice of the customer, always,” Bartels says.

To achieve that, they’re following a driving strategy to partner with individuals and their communities.

“Because we care for so many different people with different backgrounds and life experiences, we need to know how to connect with them,” Vail says. “We will be implementing a new tool—testing it with a tactical team—that hopefully will integrate right into our Epic EHR with just a couple clicks and take you to a site where you can search, ‘I’ve got a person from this country, or with this religion, or with this background,’ and it will pull up information that will help guide the clinician on how to interact with, acknowledge, and respect that individual’s uniqueness in providing them with the level of care they want.”

This tool and the organization’s new personalized patient care model will help frontline leaders and managers partner with patients and guide them as well on how to work with employees with diverse ethnic backgrounds or religious beliefs.

Bryan Health’s concept of partnership also intersects with its relationship with NRC Health, which helps healthcare organizations elevate humanized care to improve patient and provider outcomes. Bryan Health’s leaders say the NRC Health team has provided them with resources and guided them to collaborate more, which has been instrumental in their new personalized care model. Whether it’s in helping them participate in NRC Health’s conference or combing through data and trending reports, leaders say the NRC Health team has been accessible and empathetic every step of the way.

“NRC makes it easy for us – easy to be strategic, insightful, innovative, and responsive in the moment,” Vail says.

Bartels agrees, saying their quality-team captains use many video tools on the NRC Health website. Their inpatient and outpatient experience teams review and share these videos with their frontline staff. “It’s a great way to move initiatives to frontline staff,” she says.

Using empathy as a guide in connecting, listening, and partnering, Bryan Health’s leaders recognize the tremendous value in demonstrating Human Understanding with patients and employees looking to acknowledge emotions, progress, or challenges.

“NRC makes it easy for us – easy to be strategic, insightful, innovative, and responsive in the moment.”

-Lisa Vail, Chief Nursing Officer and System Vice President of Patient Care Services

“We hope that it’s a model that’ll positively impact patients and families and give guidance to the staff to identify what matters most, so that patients and families will see that in every interaction. We also want to ensure that everyone we come in contact with is treated with dignity, respect, and as a unique person.”

-Missy Bartels, Director of Critical Care Services—Stroke, Trauma, and Pastoral Care

That’s why they’re so optimistic that their personalized patient-care model of connecting, listening, and partnering will be successful.

“We hope that it’s a model that’ll positively impact patients and families and give guidance to the staff to identify what matters most, so that patients and families will see that in every interaction,” Bartels says. “We also want to ensure that everyone we come in contact with is treated with dignity, respect, and as a unique person.”

There is tremendous value in the simplicity of demonstrating Human Understanding through connection, listening, and partnership. The key is authenticity. “It’s important to remember that clinicians are experts on clinical care, and patients are experts on their lives,” says Dr. Makoul. “Care works best when they take good advantage of each other’s expertise.”