Course Spotlight: DePaul’s Service Design and Patient Experience

Andrew Gallan, an assistant professor of marketing at DePaul University’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, teaches the school’s “Service Design and Patient Experience” course. A part of DePaul’s Healthcare Sector Management MBA concentration, the class focuses on a patient’s hospital experience.

Patient experience is all about improving service to healthcare customers: everything from clarity in clinical communication to lobby lighting and the softness of beds. Today, hospitals, doctors’ offices and outpatient clinics are all looking for ways to get high marks in their patient satisfaction scores.

As the field’s importance increases, hospital CEOs across the country are creating new jobs titles like “patient experience director” and “chief patient experience officer.” Gallan’s course helps prepare the next wave of professionals looking for such roles in the healthcare industry.

“The course helps students gain an appreciation for why understanding health care from the patient’s perspective is important and how that impacts the management strategies of health care institutions,” said Gallan in an article on the Kellstadt website.

Gallan’s course is divided into three sections:

1. Understanding the business case for improving patient experience.
2. Analyzing and interpreting patient experience data.
3. Working with industry professionals to gain insight on how to improve patient experience.

“Dr. Gallan’s class for me was the most valuable and most applicable to my current job,” said Andres Valencia, a DePaul MBA student and patient experience advisor for University of Chicago Medicine (UCM).

“When I got this job I really hit the ground running,” said Valencia. “No one had to explain to me what patient surveys were, or how the data was collected and what issues there are. It’s thanks to [Dr. Gallan’s] class that I’m working in the field today.”

regions: Chicago

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