This is an excerpt from EffectiveUI’s white paper: 5 Ways to Transform the Patient Experience.
Now in what experts are calling the “second wave of innovation,” the healthcare industry has experienced significant disruption over the last decade. The Affordable Care Act and other legislation have dramatically transformed how the healthcare industry delivers care. We’ve seen a shift from fee-for-service models to accountable-care models, where providers take on responsibility for a patient’s overall wellbeing, or also “value-based care.”
While providers and physician groups adjust their delivery system, consumer demand for exceptional patient experience has also picked up. Patients expect a higher level of service, communication and education, and look to engage with providers much like they do everyday consumer products. Because digital experiences are rapidly advancing in other industries, patients expect high-quality user experiences in healthcare as well. Quality user experiences are no longer optional, and patients will not tolerate antiquated, inefficient experiences and technologies when it comes to managing their health.
With these industry-wide changes, forward-thinking healthcare organizations understand they must not only evolve how they deliver care, but also how they engage with patients. Adapting to these significant industry shifts, altering the status quo and crafting new strategies and business models are paramount to the next generation of patient care. It can feel like a daunting task, and the overwhelming nature of the change required to acclimate can be paralyzing.
How do healthcare professionals address these industry shifts? How can healthcare organizations start moving in the right direction? Here are a few ways to support positive disruption in the face of a massive industry overhaul.
1. Know your patients/customers and design for them
Truly exceptional patient experience comes from alignment between design interactions and processes with patient needs, wants and goals. How do we learn about those goals and needs? By conducting research.
Through contextual user research, you uncover patient needs, goals, motivations and behaviors. Often contextual user research is ethnographic research, where researchers immerse themselves into the patient experience to understand his or her journey, challenges and successes. Contextual user research also uses analytics and research-to-date analysis to inform data. It’s essential to know patients in order to design meaningful and enjoyable systems and interactions that will meet their needs and goals.
2. Building empathy helps avoid the common trap: “We’ve always done it this way, and it’s worked so far”
To better drive the momentum past the status quo, having organizational stakeholders understand the rationale for change ahead of time and embrace the journey ahead helps establish a great patient or customer experience within an organization. Some will need help understanding both what it means to have a great experience and how their daily decisions affect patients and customers.
An internal empathy-building campaign can help solidify the needed buy-in from all stakeholders. Below are some tips to start the process.
• Invite key players to observe initial information gathering interviews and contextual observations (or make session recordings available as soon as possible), providing the opportunity for all organizational units to have first-hand experience and feedback of patients and customers.
• Share the user personas and other outputs from the research process. Encourage everyone to refer to them during meetings, conversations and daily work. Refer to personas by name as if they are actual people with real stories.
These activities will build empathy and a common understanding of customer and patient needs. This shared knowledge also drives the prioritization of initiatives and decisions about new designs and experiences.
3. Identify champions and establish partnerships
It helps to find a champion or champions within the organization who are strong leaders willing to advocate for the organizational change, evangelize for patient needs and drive the patient experience forward. These champions have a passion for patient experience, are willing to put in the energy for the long haul and have the authority to be heard to defend the direction at all levels of the organization.
While innovative thinking may require some separation from existing constraints and organizational challenges, these changes will need support and input from many individuals and departments. It is necessary to break down internal silos and partner with every relevant segment of the organization to receive necessary support, buy-in and most importantly expertise. Some departments that should be included in the strategy are: Marketing (brand, copy and communications, analytics), research teams, IT, subject matter experts and business owners.
4. Think BIG, act small
Addressing complex challenges requires a strategy for achieving long-term outcomes. An overall driving philosophy, vision and set of success metrics that guide all activities in the initiative are needed — ideally in advance. Defining a clear vision that is consistently understood by the organization is critical to establishing directional alignment. All those involved need to understand not only how the patient experience will look and feel over time, but also why the organization is marching toward that vision.
That long-term strategy must also be carefully balanced with tactics and activities that show progress toward desired outcomes, but the organization (and its patients or customers) will also need to see real change in the short term. It is frustrating to invest in an initiative, only to wait several months or more for tangible progress while the patient experience continues to suffer. That tangible progress can establish and maintain momentum and excitement in support of the end game and provide meaningful impact to patients.
5. Consider the digital experience a point of differentiation and real return
The first interactions with digital tools set the tone for what it will be like to interact with a provider or insurance carrier. The informational website, the plan shopping experience, online appointment setting experience and other interactions are critical initial patient touch points. In ongoing patient interactions, great digital experiences not only reduce unnecessary frustration but also improve patient outcomes. Robin Robinson authored “Connected Health Tools Improve Patient Outcomes,” which illustrates how digital tools add value to the overall patient experience. Considering these points can help define the tangible impact of investments made in updating digital patient experiences and support funding, resourcing and strategic planning conversations.
Disruption is too critical to ignore
The healthcare industry has experienced dramatic transformation. To remain competitive, healthcare companies must disrupt old strategies and thinking, and embrace a new perspective that incorporates a heightened focus on the patient experience. Though disruption can be challenging and even overwhelming, the cost of not modernizing is too great to marginalize. So, let’s start by disrupting ourselves and get ready to create incredible healthcare experiences.
To read more view 5 Ways to Transform the Patient Experience.
About the Author
Kristen Cromer is the director of user experience (UX) at EffectiveUI, where she co-manages the design team and provides strategic guidance for key partners and peer support to senior-level stakeholders. Kristen has 15 years of experience in user experience (UX) design, information architecture (IA), usability testing, product design strategy, user research and learning experience design.
A majority of Kristen’s career has focused on the healthcare industry, working with clients such as Schering Plough, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Aetna, Reed Group and Health Advocate. She has also worked with clients in financial services, consumer products and government industries. Solving large, complex business challenges energizes Kristen. She enjoys identifying root causes of the issues, investigating contributing factors and identifying the right course of action to address the issue.
Kristen earned her Master of Science in educational technology from Lehigh University, and her Bachelor of Science in computer information systems at the University of Dayton.
About EffectiveUI
EffectiveUI is the go-to UX partner for high-technology companies, including industry leaders within aerospace and aviation, biotech and healthcare, consumer and industrial electronics, defense, energy, financial services, software and telecom. In making technology more useful, useable and desirable, we help our clients reinvent significant aspects of their business, from the experience they provide to customers, to the tools used to streamline operations, to the products brought to market. We work collaboratively with clients to solve complex business problems and drive transformation through four tightly integrated areas of expertise: user research and insight, digital strategy, UX design and UI development and integration. Learn more at effectiveui.com.
