What does a great patient experience really look like when people are at their most vulnerable?
In this episode, I sat down with Stanford Health Care's SVP and Chief Patient Experience and Operational Performance Officer, Alpa Vyas, to explore how one of the world's leading healthcare organizations is rethinking the human side of care.
From the outside, healthcare is often seen as a system of processes, technology, and clinical outcomes. But as Alpa explains, every interaction sits within a deeply emotional moment in someone's life, where fear, uncertainty, and complexity collide. That reality shapes everything.
Our conversation goes back to the early days of Stanford's transformation, where Alpa recognized a gap that many organizations still struggle with today. Improvement efforts were underway, systems were being optimized, yet the patient voice was largely absent. Inspired by design thinking principles from Stanford's own d.school, her team began with empathy as the foundation. That shift changed the direction of everything that followed, from how feedback was gathered to how decisions were made across the organization.
We also explored the role of technology and where it truly fits. There is often a temptation to lead with AI or automation, but Alpa brings the focus back to culture, behavior, and trust. Technology, including platforms like Qualtrics, became powerful once the right questions were being asked and the right mindset was in place.
Moving from delayed paper surveys to real-time feedback transformed not only how quickly issues could be addressed, but how patients felt heard. One story stood out where a patient received a follow-up call before even leaving the parking lot, a simple moment that redefined their perception of care.
We also touched on "Operation Blue Sky," an initiative that looks beyond traditional surveys to capture insight from call recordings, messages, and other unstructured data sources. It opens the door to a future where healthcare providers can anticipate problems before they happen and intervene at the right moment. That raises important questions around pace, trust, and readiness, especially in an industry that has good reason to move carefully.
This episode is ultimately a conversation about balance. Between innovation and responsibility, between efficiency and empathy, and between data and human connection. So how do we ensure that as healthcare becomes more advanced, it also becomes more human? And what lessons from this journey could apply far beyond healthcare?
[00:00:04] Welcome back to the Tech Talks Daily Podcast. Today, I'm going to be sitting down with someone working right at the heart of some of the most important conversations in healthcare right now and how to make complex systems feel more human. My guest today, she is the Senior Vice President and Chief Patient Experience and Operational Performance Officer at Stanford Health Care.
[00:00:32] And in a world where patients and families are often dealing with fear, uncertainty and frustration, my guest's work is focusing on making healthcare easier to navigate, less burdensome and more responsive to the very real needs of the people that are moving through it.
[00:00:52] And one of the things I've loved about this conversation is just how compelling it is that it's not just a technology first story. It's quite the opposite. It begins with empathy. It begins with listening. And it begins with a very real understanding that when people enter the healthcare system, they are often doing so at one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.
[00:01:16] So I want to learn more about Stanford Health's care journey from delayed paper surveys and disconnected feedback loops to real-time insight. What I mean by that is more actionable data and a much more proactive approach to the patient experience. And we'll also explore how AI is beginning to play a role, not to replace the human side of care, of course, but to support it.
[00:01:43] Support it by helping teams spot signals earlier, reduce friction and spend more time where it matters most, building trust with patients. So the conversation today is about people, progress and what happens when you combine empathy, operational discipline and the right technology in a service of a better healthcare experience. But enough from me. Let me officially introduce you to my guest now.
[00:02:11] So thank you for joining me on the podcast today. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Sure thing. My name is Alper Theas. I'm the Senior Vice President and Chief Patient Experience Officer at Stanford Healthcare. I have the pleasure of being in this role for about 10 years now. And part of what I do is to think about how we can make a very complex healthcare system a little less frustrating and burdensome to our patients, our families and our teams.
[00:02:41] And it's such a good point you made there, because before we talk about AI and how tech can improve experiences, given that most people experience the healthcare system themselves or through a loved one. Tell me more about the challenges that you face, why it's important to understand where you can make it easier or better, because it's not technology first, is it really at all? It's people first.
[00:04:00] They're scared. To help figure out ways to make that process less painful and easier. So honestly, patients and families can focus on the thing they need to be focusing on, which is getting better or getting to that next phase in their recovery. Yeah, because there is just no room for a negative tech experience or tech frustration in that kind of environment, is there? That's right. So start from the very beginning.
[00:04:29] Can you tell me a bit more about how you approach this challenge at Stanford Healthcare and the technology put in place and how you managed to turn this around? Because it's a great success story, but I'd love to take you back right to the beginning on how you got here. Sure. I think we've made a lot of progress. And I'm probably a little bit hard on us to say that there's still lots more to do. But for me, the process started over a decade ago.
[00:04:57] And my background is actually in performance improvement. And when I was thinking about, well, we're improving things, we're looking at workflows and we want to make things better on behalf of and in service of, you know, patients and families and certainly the teams. And one thing being kind of a traditional performance improvement person, when you look at improvement methodology, something that was missing was really the patient voice.
[00:05:23] And being at Stanford Healthcare, we get access to the university and the D school. So the design school at Stanford. And one of the best things that I learned when I took a design thinking class is the very first step starts with empathy. And I think learning that helped put patients in the center of kind of what we do and really trying to understand perspectives from what patients are telling us and what they're not telling us and sometimes what they're showing us.
[00:05:52] And so that was kind of where things started for me. And when I kind of took on the role overseeing patient experience, that was one of the things that I wanted to bring to the work. And the second part was, well, we're getting feedback from our patients. It was often on paper through paper surveys that came to us eight weeks after the fact. I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday. Forget six or eight weeks ago.
[00:06:21] And so how do we kind of think about giving our clinical and operational leaders the right tools and information to do the things that we're asking them to do in terms of improvement? And so that was a question that I had. And talking to the team, it was like, well, our information is quite delayed. And I don't think the questions that we're asking are actually what's important to patients. So there are a couple of parts in our kind of evolution journey.
[00:06:49] One was, how do we get more timely, actionable feedback? And then how do we make sure that we're asking the questions that are most important to patients and families? And oh, by the way, that our care teams can do something about. So the first part was we started redesigning our survey questions. And the second part was looking for an opportunity to have a platform that allowed us to do this real-time type of feedback gathering and work.
[00:07:15] And so those were kind of the first two steps in our process. Along the way, and even maybe before that, one of the things that we did was really having to establish a culture around experience and putting in programs that helped create consistency around communications, interaction behaviors. So multiple parts to our journey, the culture aspect, the technology and the platform aspect. And then what are we actually asking for feedback around?
[00:07:44] So I think those are kind of the three cornerstones of our kind of experience journey in our program. And leveraging all three of those aspects, I think, has helped us in our improvement journey. And were Qualtrics a big part of that from the early stages? Or did you have to select a partner and they were the natural fit? How did that relationship start? Yeah, it was really the question of how do we get more real-time feedback?
[00:08:12] Because prior to that, again, as I mentioned, you know, paper surveys taking a lot of time to get the feedback to our frontline leaders. And so really thinking about the platform that allowed that capability. And that's when we kind of made our switch to say, wow, we can go from waiting six to eight weeks to the same day. We actually had a—this is a great story.
[00:08:37] We had a manager in one of our clinics that got back to our team after we had made the switch and said, I literally just got off the phone with a patient who said that they got a survey and they had some feedback for us. And as a manager, I got notified. I immediately called. A patient wasn't even out of the parking lot. And so that's probably the extreme of real-time feedback.
[00:09:03] But the patient was so surprised and saying like, wow, not only did you actually read my feedback, you're following up on it. And that has—you know, that left an impression with that patient. It was like, gosh, they really do care about what I'm saying. And I think that just goes to build the relationship between patient and the care team. I think everywhere we turn now, we're repeatedly asked for feedback. Everything, every purchase, there's an email, there's a message, there's a text message.
[00:09:32] How did we do? But seldom do we ever hear anything back on that at all. I'm curious. Before we met today, I was doing a little research on you. And I was also reading about Operation Blue Sky. Sounds incredibly intriguing. But tell me more about that. Yeah, it's probably one of the most exciting things is being an experienced leader, especially in healthcare, to be able to take on.
[00:09:56] And the collaboration with Qualtrics, I think, has been, one, fun, and two, pretty innovative in the way that we can start to look at and bring together unstructured data. So to your point earlier, everybody gets a survey. Everybody gets a, hey, tell us how we did. And, you know, most people will choose to skip it. Some people, especially if they had a bad experience, may give feedback.
[00:10:22] But what we know is our patients give us feedback all the time. Not necessarily through a direct survey, but through all sorts of other data channels. And so for us, how can we take advantage of what our patients are already telling us to help drive improvement and insights and, better yet, keep some bad experiences from happening to patients? So the idea or the premise is to bring together multiple sets of unstructured data. And I'll give you some examples.
[00:10:52] Most businesses have a call center. You have somebody that tries to help either schedule an appointment or navigate through a question. And we have those call recordings. We have messages that we've sent. We have social media posts and things like that. And other operational data that will help us kind of put context around what's happening. And most organizations haven't actually been able to bring large sets of data like this together.
[00:11:22] And what we want to do is take it, create insights, and then create some actionability around that. Eventually, what we'd like to do is take what we've learned about what's happened in the past to predict what's going to happen in the future.
[00:11:35] And then I think the third stage is really how do we get from kind of an aggregate population or patient population level down to an individual patient level to where we can intervene on when we start to see signals in our data where something might get lost or there hasn't been a follow-up or a ping on this referral, for example. We want to make sure we close the loop. And fast forward to present day. You're experiencing huge success. You've got a massive presence here as well.
[00:12:05] You and your team speaking, keynotes, et cetera, breakout sessions. What's the main message you're trying to deliver here and what you've accomplished? Any big stats or anything you can share around where you are now and where you want to be going? A couple of messages. I think I'm very proud of the work that we've been able to do and our team over the past, you know, five or ten years in the ability to kind of move our kind of outcome metrics when we look at our experience scores. But those scores are just numbers.
[00:12:33] And those numbers actually equate to people and patients who have given us the privilege to care for them in our health system. The thing that I am most proud of in our collaboration with Qualtrics is the ability to advance the industry in general in terms of the experience work. It is not something that one person is in charge of in a back office somewhere.
[00:13:01] It really is about the culture that we're trying to create. And I think that it is, I know, for our organization, one of our core pillars and areas of focus. And I think that by talking about it more, amplifying it more, other organizations and many great healthcare organizations are doing the same.
[00:13:22] And if we do have anyone listening in other healthcare industries that are much earlier on in that journey, feel incredibly overwhelmed with all this talk of AI, agentic AI, and they know where they want to go. They look at where you are and think this is where we need to be, but don't know where to start, where to begin. Any advice you'd pass down and any lessons that you've learned along the way as well? So many lessons. But I think my core pieces of advice is to start with the foundation.
[00:13:48] And what I mean by that is really focusing in on the culture and the behavioral components. That's where we started. And it is by defining what do we want interactions to look and feel like. And you do that by defining them, training people to those standards, and then really focusing in on making sure that we're adhering to them.
[00:14:12] Some of our rounding practices, again, making sure that staff members feel supported and that they know what the expectations are. The second piece is the information and the data. It has to be actionable. It has to be presented in a way to frontline teams so they understand and can do the improvement work. And then I think the third thing that I would say is around the change management piece and really focusing alignment around the leadership team.
[00:14:41] Again, understanding what a priority patient experience kind of needs to be. Most of the time people try to draw a business case down to the financials or the ROI of something. And oftentimes we have the conversation that experience is important in a couple of ways. Patient experience is one side of the coin to staff and physician experience. They are interrelated.
[00:15:07] And then the second thing I would say is that experience is linked to clinical outcomes. And that's the currency by which we hold ourselves accountable, right? We are in the business of taking care of people. And patients with great experiences may tend to have better outcomes because they have trust in the healthcare system. They know their care team. And those that don't may fall off of their pathway.
[00:15:36] And that's what we don't want to see happen. And one of the beautiful things about coming to a big tech conference like this is all the conversations that you enjoy, all the keynotes, all the big announcements. Anything that you've seen and heard that particularly excites you or could help you in the future? As a healthcare leader, coming to a kind of industry agnostic conference is always, I think, one, overwhelming but very exciting.
[00:16:01] Because it gives us thoughts and ideas about how do we adapt what's happening in other industries to our own. And I think, you know, there's always nuance. There's always, like, ways that we have to adapt features and functions. But it's one of the things that gets us to think about kind of what's the next level.
[00:16:20] And many of the ideas for the progress that we've had have come from conferences, like previous X4 conferences, where we have seen features and functions that are used in different industries. And our team's like, hey, I think we have an idea of how we can adapt that for the context that we work in. So that's always exciting. Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:43] And when you get that plane ride home, you and your team, all those ideas bouncing around, anything in particular you're going to be taking back with you and reflecting on the entire experience of everything? Yeah, I mean, I think the things that are exciting to see is how other industries are using or contemplating the impact of AI, of course. In healthcare, I think there's a lot more focus.
[00:17:10] It's certainly probably a more conservative industry when it comes to implementing technology. But I think also sometimes the most ripe for some of the places where we can apply technology to help improve the efficiency or workflows of our teams and do that on behalf of patients.
[00:17:33] So I think just really trying to understand how quickly things are moving, what's the right pace for change, and how do we actually prepare our teams for what's happening next or some of the reflections that I've had. Yeah, so many big takeaways. And for anybody listening who wants to find out more information, I'll include a few links to your LinkedIn and some of the press releases and things from here. But more than anything, just thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you.
[00:18:02] So many big takeaways from my conversation with Alper today. All framed in a very real opportunity in healthcare. Yep, AI can help. Yes, better systems and better data can help. But the real goal is to reduce the burden on the patients and the families so they can focus on getting better rather than trying to navigate complexity when they're already experiencing one of the most stressful moments in their lives.
[00:18:31] And I also loved her point that experience is not a side project owned by one team sitting in the background. In healthcare especially, it touches everything. It shapes trust. It influences outcomes. And it affects not only patients and families, but also the staff and physicians delivering care every single day. And I think that is what makes this work at Stanford Healthcare so interesting. They're not chasing technology for the sake of it.
[00:19:01] They're asking a much better question. How can we use these tools in a way that is timely, precise, context aware and always under supervision? Also that care teams, human care teams can focus more of their time on what healthcare is really about. So if you'd like to learn more, I'll include all the links in the show notes so you can connect with my guests and explore more about what's happening over there.
[00:19:28] And as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts here. Where do you think AI and technology can genuinely reduce friction in healthcare without losing the human connection that patients want more than anything? Love to hear your thoughts and experiences, good and bad. TechTalksNetwork.com. You can contact me over there. But that is it for today. So thank you for listening. And I will be back in your podcast feeds bright and early tomorrow. Bye for now.