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.
Implementing Best Practices To Improve Patient ExperienceCornell Course
Course Overview
Patient experience improvement must ultimately be felt by patients and families "on the ground" in actual care settings. This means the real "action" of improvement work is selecting and deploying interventions that impact the day-to-day workflows of caregiver teams where care is delivered. Like all healthcare quality improvement, these interventions often require behavior change — especially around communication — and must be rooted in evidence to have credibility and traction at the front line. This course will equip you to take the exciting and critical step from data analysis to action.
You will explore the patient experience body of knowledge, drawing on decades of research into what interventions actually work. You'll learn about proven best practices and examine how these practices can be effectively deployed across the broad healthcare team and inserted into real workflows.
You will also grapple with the key issue of accountability, or how to ensure interventions are consistently implemented after they've been identified and communicated. By the end of this course, you'll be prepared to select the right evidence-based interventions and drive the follow-through that makes them stick — the key elements of success in any patient experience strategy.
You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:
- Understanding the Foundations of Patient Experience
- Building Your Patient Experience Data Foundation
Key Course Takeaways
- Define evidence-based patient experience interventions and best practices
- Link evidence-based interventions to patient experience priorities and organizational improvement targets
- Implement patient experience interventions using effective deployment strategies
- Evaluate intervention effectiveness through monitoring, accountability, and performance measures
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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