TouchPoints: Moments that Matter in Healthcare

Send us Fan MailThe patient is in the room. The provider walks in. And what happens next will define more of the patient’s felt experience than almost anything else in the entire care journey.In this episode of TouchPoints: Moments that Matter, host Melissa Gilkes-Smith arrives at Pillar Five of the Nine Pillars of Patient Experience Framework: the Clinical Encounter. Everything that came before, how a patient found you, scheduled with you, was communicated with before their visit, and experienced their arrival, has been building toward this single moment. And what a patient takes away from it depends far less on clinical technique than most providers realize.Patients are rarely equipped to evaluate the technical quality of their care. What they evaluate is the communication. Whether they felt heard. Whether they understood what was happening and why. Whether the provider in front of them made them feel like a person or a problem.Melissa’s guest today has spent 15 years at one of the most unusual intersections in healthcare: practicing medicine, building companies, and training some of the world’s top doctors and executives on the one skill that determines every outcome — trust. Shawn Gibbs is a serial entrepreneur, medical provider, Co-Founder and CEO of GIV Gowns, and the creator of the Irreplaceable Provider Method — a system built on one foundational belief: trust in healthcare has been underdesigned. And it can be fixed.Together, Melissa and Shawn unpack what the clinical encounter actually is when it’s working, why it so often isn’t, and what it takes, practically, behaviorally, and culturally, to become the provider patients choose, return to, and recommend.IN THIS EPISODE:Why trust in healthcare has been “underdesigned," and what that costs in patient adherence, loyalty, and outcomesWhat the Irreplaceable Provider Method is and the specific communication behaviors it buildsWhy listening is a clinical skill, and how it is fundamentally different from information gatheringThe highest-stakes Moments that Matter inside the clinical encounter: the opening, the delivery of information, and the closeHow to design a well-structured clinical opening when the provider is behind schedule and the patient is already anxiousHow the close of an encounter determines whether a patient leaves with clarity or confusion, and what happens when it’s left to chanceWhy communication quality is a leadership responsibility, not a provider personality traitHow Accountability and Collaboration, two of the four values of the Culture of Care, live inside the exam roomABOUT SHAWN GIBBSShawn Gibbs is a serial entrepreneur, medical provider, and Co-Founder and CEO of GIV Gowns — a company redesigning the most overlooked moment in healthcare: the one before the provider ever enters the room. After 15 years on the front lines of clinical medicine, Shawn identified a problem no one was naming: that trust in healthcare has been underdesigned. GIV Gowns serves as a physical trust signal, elevating patient dignity through premium, clinically intelligent attire. The Irreplaceable Provider Method trains providers to become the ones patients choose, return to, and recommend. Together, they form what Shawn calls the Patient and Clinical Experience Architecture, a new standard for how trust is designed in care.CONNECT WITH SHAWN GIBBSGIV Gowns: www.givgowns.comIrreplaceable Provider Method: www.shawngibbs.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-gibbs-8ba39a43LISTENER CHALLENGEIn your next clinical encounter, or your next conversation about clinical quality in your organization, ask one question: Does this patient feel heard? Not informed. Not treated. Heard. That’s the starting point for everything discussed in this episode.

Send us Fan MailEveryone in healthcare has heard it: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It gets nodded at in boardrooms, printed on culture decks, and repeated until it stops meaning anything. But what if that framing is not just incomplete, it’s actually misleading?In this episode of TouchPoints: Moments that Matter, host Melissa Gilkes-Smith sits down with patient experience expert and coach Andy Clark for an honest, grounded conversation about the relationship between culture, strategy, and the employee experience that makes patient care possible.The real question, as Melissa frames it, is not whether your culture is strong. It’s whether your culture is aligned with what your strategy actually demands. A great culture running the wrong strategy still loses. A strong strategy running through a misaligned culture gets quietly dismantled at every level. What every healthcare leader needs to understand is this: culture doesn’t replace strategy. It compounds it or corrupts it.And underneath all of it is a truth that gets overlooked in almost every patient experience initiative: you cannot build a great patient experience on a broken employee experience. How your team feels as they walk through the door every day is exactly how your patients will feel as they walk through yours.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:Why “culture eats strategy” has been misapplied in healthcare, and the more useful diagnostic question every leader should be askingThe research-backed connection between employee engagement and patient experience outcomes, and what disengagement actually looks like from a patient’s perspectiveWhat culture-strategy misalignment looks like in practice, including the workaround culture, the initiative graveyard, and the cynicism that builds when change efforts don’t landHow to build a culture of accountability without fear, psychological safety, and genuine recognition that actually moves peopleWhy leadership behavior is the culture, and the real cost of toxic tolerance when leaders fail to actWhat it takes to make culture change stick after the launch energy fadesABOUT ANDY CLARKAndy Clark is a patient experience expert and coach who focuses on helping healthcare leaders shape healthy cultures and get measurable results. His work sits at the intersection of organizational culture, team development, and the practical realities of leading in a healthcare environment where the stakes are high and the margin for cultural dysfunction is low.CONNECT WITH ANDY CLARKWebsite: https://www.clarkcoachingconsulting.com/LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-c-6441967

Send us Fan MailTouchPoints — Episode 1: Why I Started Paying Attention to the TouchpointsWhat if "great clinical care" and "a great patient experience" aren't the same thing, and almost nobody is running the second one on purpose?In this opening episode of TouchPoints, healthcare operations consultant Melissa Gilkes-Smith introduces the worldview behind the show and walks listeners through her proprietary Nine Pillars of Patient Experience framework — the same map she's used for almost 20 years in healthcare operations to diagnose why good practices quietly lose patients they should have kept.This isn't a podcast about being nicer to patients. It's a podcast about systems.What you'll learn in this episode:→ Why "we provide great care, but patients still leave" is never a care problem, it's a pillar failure, and what that actually means→ The single belief that changed how Melissa thinks about every practice she's ever worked with: a remarkable patient experience doesn't happen by accident, it happens by design→ The full Nine Pillars framework, walked in three movements:Before They Arrive — Pillars 1, 2, and 3: how patients form an opinion of you before they ever call (Initial Exposure), what determines whether they can actually say yes to you (Inquiry & Scheduling), and how the communication between scheduling and arrival quietly creates or prevents no-shows (Pre-Visit Communication).Inside the Visit — Pillars 4, 5, and 6: why the first thirty seconds of a check-in either reinforce a patient's decision or damage it (Arrival & Check-In), why "I felt rushed" is almost never about the doctor (Clinical Encounter), and the most overlooked moment in healthcare, how a visit is closed, and remembered (Checkout & Exit).After They Leave — Pillars 7, 8, and 9: why most practices disappear after the visit ends and lose patients without ever knowing why (Post-Visit Follow-Up), how perfect clinical care can be undone by a single confusing statement (Billing & Financial Experience), and the most important diagnostic principle in the entire framework, why the long-term patient relationship isn't a touchpoint at all, but the output of everything upstream.→ The unifying move: the same lens that diagnoses a practice also diagnoses a leader. Every place a manager touches their team is a touchpoint, too, and broken touchpoints upstream cause failures downstream, both in practice and in a person.The core argument:Most practices measure patient experience globally and fix problems reactively. They invest everything in clinical teams, technology, and facilities — and then wonder why patients quietly drift away. This episode argues that experience is not a feeling. It's a system. And once you can name the system, you can fix it.For:Practice owners, healthcare administrators, executives, practice managers, and anyone who has ever said "we give great care — why are patients still leaving?" If you've felt the gap between the care your practice delivers and the experience patients actually have, this episode names what's happening and gives you a map.

Send us Fan MailWelcome to TouchPoints: Moments That Matter in Healthcare, the podcast for leaders, clinicians, and early careerists who believe that how we deliver care matters as much as the care itself.Each episode, we'll explore the people, practices, and principles that shape exceptional patient experiences. You'll hear conversations grounded in the Nine Pillars of Patient Experience Framework, practical insights on practice management, and leadership wisdom drawn from the Focused Leader Program for those building their careers in healthcare.Whether you're at the bedside, in the boardroom, or just starting your journey, this is your invitation to lead with intention and serve with heart. Subscribe now — the first episode drops soon.