Biography

Mary Malone is a passionate advocate for transforming patient and family experiences with all aspects of the health care system.

Her expertise lies in guiding strategic decision making for health care organizations regarding satisfaction measurement and improvement. She has worked with hundreds of providers and thousands of health care professionals, helping them maximize the value of satisfaction data, integrate satisfaction data into performance improvement initiatives, and develop effective strategies for improving patient and family experiences.

Her emphasis is on creating a culture of "patient-inspired excellence" and inspiring the hearts of health care professionals.

She uses "lessons from the leaders" and focuses on developing leadership and service skills at all levels of the organization. She believes that improving the quality of work life is an essential component of improving patient experiences and that quality/system/process improvement techniques should be applied to improving service delivery.

In roles that include catalyst, coach, consultant, educator, innovator, and provocateur, she helps leadership groups - whether boards, executives, physicians, managers or front-line employees - to incorporate customer service as a competitive advantage and growth strategy. Her search for "best practices" and improvement strategies has taken her to site visits to nearly 1,000 health care facilities.

Mary has more than thirty years of experience in the health care industry. Prior to forming her own firm in 2005, she worked for Press Ganey Associates - the nation's largest health care satisfaction measurement and improvement company - for more than 14 years, serving in a variety of senior leadership positions in corporate development, marketing, communications, customer service and sales. She was responsible for integrating the operations of the former Parkside Associates, which was purchased by Press Ganey.

Her most recent position was Executive Director, Consulting Services where she served as the primary client contact for all consulting engagements. Mary has additional experience as a Senior Consultant and, later, Director of Health Care Communications for a national accounting and consulting firm. Her professional career began as an administrative project assistant at a large Midwestern academic medical center and one of its affiliate community hospitals.

Mary is a member of the board of directors for The Center for Health Design, an organization dedicated to using principles of evidence-based design to create better health care environments. Mary serves on the Advisory Board of the Rush Center for Healthcare Management and Policy Research. She's a member of several other professional associations, including The Leader's Board for Service Excellence, Society for Healthcare Consumer Advocacy and Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development.

An insightful strategist, she writes and speaks often about various aspects of patient satisfaction. She is a sought after commentator on the future of customer service in health care and gives several hundred presentations each year to hospitals, health care organizations and professional societies. She's widely recognized as an expert resource for individuals and teams helping to create Wow experiences for patients, families, physicians and health care professionals.

A prolific writer, in 2005 Mary co-edited book Making It Right: Healthcare Service Recovery Tools, Techniques and Best Practices. She also recently authored chapters in Improving Healthcare with Better Building Design edited by Sara Marberry and Patient Satisfaction: Understanding and Managing the Experience of Care, Second Edition by Irwin Press, PhD. She is a contributing editor for Masterpieces in Health Care Leadership: Cases and Analysis for Best Practices, published by Jones & Bartlett in 2007.

Mary has also published numerous articles in leading health care journals such as Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Safety, Strategies for Healthcare Excellence, Trustee, Quality Review Bulletin, Journal of Employee Health Benefits, and Healthcare Financial Management. Her columns were a regular and popular feature of The Satisfaction Monitor, a client publication of Press Ganey.

In addition to hundreds of client presentations, and workshops at Press Ganey-sponsored national and regional conferences, Mary is a frequent contributor at health care industry meetings in roles ranging from keynote speaker to workshop leader. Among the national organizations that have recently invited her participation: American College of Healthcare Executives, VHA, Inc., Forum for Healthcare Strategists, Society for Healthcare Marketing and Strategy Development, Society for Healthcare Consumer Advocacy, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and the state hospital associations of Iowa, Montana and Texas. Captivating, inspirational, practical and down-to-earth are often-used descriptions of her speeches and workshops.

Mary received an M.S. in Health Systems Management from Rush University in Chicago, IL, and her Juris Doctor from the University of Notre Dame Law School. She also holds a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Notre Dame.

Mary is active in the local community supporting organizations such as the Center for the Homeless in South Bend and is a former board member of the Literacy Council for St. Joseph County. Involved as an alumna of the Department of Health Systems Management (HSM) at Rush University, she has recently served on several departmental committees and is a Past-President of the HSM Alumni Association. She has served as adjunct lecturer in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-South Bend and is a guest lecturer in the Department of Health Systems Management at Rush University in Chicago.

Mary's experience in health care began as a "candy-striper" and later she worked on the tray-line in a hospital food service department, then as a unit secretary and nurse's aide. For several summers she was a restaurant manager in a large amusement park.

Mary enjoys reading, downhill skiing and traveling to visit far-flung family and friends. A Jersey Girl, she's a Bruce Springsteen "aficionado" and has seen him (and the E Street Band) in concert 73 times.