After her sister died in 2012, Barbara Lewis, MBA, founded Joan’s Family Bill of Rights to improve the patient experience. She wrote the business case on why hospitals should have a Patient & Family Advisory Council (PFAC) in 2014. She is the co-chair emerita of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Regional Patient Advisory Council, representing 4.6 million members, and the Beryl Institute Global Patient & Family Advisory Board. She has researched, written about, and presented on PFACs at conferences, as well as at the National Academy of Medicine. 

She is getting a PhD in health care administration and her dissertation is about the PFAC impact on hospitals’ star ratings and patient experience ratings. Barbara helps hospitals launch and sustain high-performing PFACs. She is a marketing consultant at the Center for Professionalism and Communication in Health Care and hosts two podcasts – one on communication and the other on professionalism. She is an editorial board member of the Journal of Patient Experience and a former board member of the Academy for Communication in Healthcare. She has served on committees sponsored by CMS, the National Quality Forum, Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital Institutional Review Board, UCLA Health No One Dies Alone, and Epic.