Rick Evans is a nationally recognized pioneer, thought leader, and expert in the field of patient and consumer experience in healthcare, having served in facility and system leadership roles for nearly 30 years.
Most recently, Rick served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Experience Officer for NewYork-Presbyterian. In this role, he oversaw NYP’s ongoing strategy to improve and enhance the patient and family experience across NYP’s continuum of care and its 11 facilities in and around New York City. Rick also led enterprise-wide efforts — collaborating with leaders from the Columbia and Weill Cornell Physician Organizations — to improve access and the customer experience across an extensive network of over 700 ambulatory sites. In June 2026, Rick transitioned from a full-time role to a strategic advisor role at NYP.
Earlier in his career, Rick served as the first Chief Experience Officer appointed at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Massachusetts General Physicians Organization in Boston, MA. He also led patient experience and operations roles in healthcare systems in Delaware and New Jersey.
Rick is a member of the American Nurse Credentialing Center’s Magnet Commission, serving as the Commission’s Public Member. He also serves as an Executive Advisor for The Beryl Institute, where he leads the work of the national Patient Experience Policy Forum. In addition, Rick is the current Chair of the New York State Patient Experience Officers Network, sponsored by the Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS).
Rick is a Visiting Lecturer at the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University and has offered lectures at both Harvard University’s Chan School of Public Health and Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
A regular featured presenter at national and international conferences, Rick is a columnist and podcast host on patient and consumer experience issues with Becker’s Healthcare. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Wadhams Hall Seminary College in Ogdensburg, NY, and a Master’s degree in Theology from Christ the King Seminary in East Aurora, NY.
Building Your Patient Experience FoundationCornell Course
Course Overview
Improving patient experience is both an art and a science, but any credible strategy must be powered by data. At its core, patient experience improvement is quality improvement work, which means it must be grounded in reliable data that can be methodically analyzed, effectively targeted, and measurably improved over time. To be seen as legitimate by clinicians and administrators, the work must be presented in a scientific and rigorous context. This course will equip you to build the "px data infrastructure" that serves as the bedrock of any effective patient experience strategy.
You will work through the core elements of collecting, understanding, and interpreting patient experience data within healthcare organizations. You'll learn about the regulatory aspects of data collection that organizations must meet for reimbursement and rating requirements, and you'll explore methods for reliably collecting data along with the ever-expanding range of data sources. You'll also examine how patient experience data fits within the broader context of data that healthcare organizations track to gauge their overall effectiveness.
Most importantly, you'll discover how to review, analyze, and prioritize data for action within your organization. By the end of this course, you'll be prepared to establish a data foundation that enables you to credibly target improvement efforts and measurably "move the needle" on patient experience over time.
You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:
- Understanding the Foundations of Patient Experience
Key Course Takeaways
- Define the core components and parameters of patient experience data
- Integrate patient experience data into an organization's balanced scorecard
- Analyze patient experience data across the patient journey to establish improvement priorities and targets
How It Works
Course Author
Who Should Enroll
- Physician leaders, healthcare executives, and hospital administrators responsible for organizational strategy, clinical operations, service lines, or facilities where patient experience is measured and improved
- Healthcare providers and care team members — including physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals — who deliver care and shape the patient and family experience at the front line
- Quality, safety, and performance improvement managers responsible for data-driven improvement initiatives, measurement, or regulatory reporting
- Patient experience and service excellence professionals responsible for experience strategy, survey data, patient feedback, or improvement interventions
- Healthcare board members and community stakeholders providing governance and oversight of organizational performance and patient-centered care
- Project managers, planners, and designers developing healthcare facilities, workflows, or technology that impact how patients and families experience care
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