Bridging the communication gap in long-term care

In the newest Health Stealth Radio episode, host Frank Cutitta leaves fire-walls and zero-trust frameworks behind to tackle a different kind of “attack surface”: the emotional harm patients and families feel when transitions of care go wrong. His guest is Surabhi Saxena, PT, MS, and Manager of Quality & Patient Safety at Spalding Hospital Cambridge, a long-term acute-care facility in the Mass General Brigham network.

Saxena’s capstone project for Harvard Medical School uncovered a stubborn problem: half of all complaints and grievances at her hospital were rooted in poor communication or unmet expectations. Her deceptively simple remedy — an on-demand “welcome” video in multiple languages, delivered on QR-enabled iPads within 24-48 hours of admission — sparked a cross-department effort that pulled in nursing leadership, IT, infection-control, marketing, volunteers, and the hospital’s PFAC.

“Keeping it simple really worked,” she tells Cutitta, describing how six shared iPads, a laminated QR code, and a fail-safe backup plan turned a stalled idea into a living workflow that’s already pushing patient-experience scores north.

The conversation is a field guide for anyone trying to weave patient voices into digital-health rollouts without crushing frontline staff:

• Co-design from day one – Bring PFAC members, unit champions, and IT into the room before the first storyboard is drafted.
• Minimize clicks, maximize redundancy – One-tap video launch for patients without smartphones; QR codes for those who do.
• Plan for turnover – When clinical practice leaders vanished in a post-reorg shuffle, student volunteers kept the iPads rolling.
• Measure what matters – Early control charts show 100 percent of surveyed patients now “understand what to expect” after watching the video.

Listen on demand to learn how a seven-step QI framework, a few laminated stickers, and a lot of stakeholder persistence can turn a low-tech tool into a high-impact experience boost. Stream the episode wherever you get your podcasts, and let us know what stealthy topics you’d like us to tackle next.