mommyjenlin

With 2014 close at hand, and the healthcare consumer taking even more control in their healthcare choices in the rapid evolution of healthcare from a provider-dominated, and directed industry to a consumer-driven industry, significant changes need to take place in how we market and do business. Being responsive, outcome transparent, delivering an exceptionally consistent patient experience from first contact through post purchase, you're finding that meeting individual expectations, and needs is never easy. But as many successful healthcare companies will attest, these are no longer nice to have business requirements, but got to have requirements in order to survive. Not everyone will be in an ACO, Patient Medical Home, Medicare or expanded Medicaid program in 2014. You will still need to compete for that individual patient at some level. Bundled payments are not going to change that. In mean really, how much different will your price be from the competition? Healthcare consumers l...

Or, the dangers of viewing the customer-patient experience management process, thinking you know it all, it's easy to do, or only use patient satisfaction survey results. And from the questions I get from healthcare professionals around the country, it became very clear that a key element is missing from most efforts at improving the patient experience. Healthcare providers, aka hospitals for the most part, are not doing the required quantitative and qualitative market research on patient experience, attitudes, behaviors and expectations in their market place. They are assuming that because they read an article, go to a seminar that they know it all. They are only using patient satisfaction survey data, lean six sigma results and their previous quality improvement efforts. Few are actually talking to patients. Had you been conducting market research on your customers-patients in the experience management process outside of  internal patient interactions, you would  be much be...

Or, the dangers of only viewing the customer-patient experience management as only the patient encounter. An Intuit survey, "Healthcare consumers want online control "- HealthcareFinanceNews.com, March 3, 2011, indicates overwhelming support by the general public for more control over their healthcare via online activities. They want healthcare providers including physicians, to be accessible online. They want to pay their bills online, communicate with the provider, request appointments and get lab results. A clearly demonstrated experience need and expectation of consumers, that except for a few isolated healthcare organizations, is generally lacking among healthcare providers. Had you been conducting market research on your customers-patients in the experience management process outside of the patient interaction, you would have understood that expectation and need. But unfortunately, most customer-patient experience management programs in healthcare providers are focused...

With the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), impetus was created to drive providers to create Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). Interesting in that the ACO model was left open. That is, patients can move outside of their ACO home for service and care. Unlike Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) where care was restricted to in-network providers, planners were afraid of the backlash that would occur if they created a closed-model HMO style, ACO model for Medicare beneficiaries. Studies suggest that up to 1/4 of beneficiaries enrolled in ACOs would not stay within the ACO network and would need incentives to do so. That is a big out-of-network churn rate and too expensive to the ACO. So what is a healthcare provider to do? 1. Make sure that you have a Customer Experience Management Program place. You need to be close to your members by understanding their current needs and how their needs change over time. This is consumer-directed healthcare not provider-directe...

For several weeks now, I have been blogging about Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare . The reaction and comments have been most interesting from around the world. Many have come from physicians, CEOs of hospitals, Consultants, Directors, Managers, line-staff and coordinators. The countries of origin for the comments include not only the United States, but Belgium, England, France, China, Russia and India to name a few. Several have asked for the materials offered up to help them internally to start or move forward their companies CEM process. Some major observations that can be drawn from the comments and discussions. First, is that leadership across many healthcare industry channels are struggling with the transition of the healthcare marketplace from a provider-dominated, decision-making enterprise, to a consumer-directed, consumer-controlled healthcare system. The consumer has slowly and most assuredly been taking a more active role in healthcare treatment de...

CMS has proposed that 30 percent of a healthcare providers quality incentive payment be based on patient experience. Using the HCAHPS patient satisfaction data as the experience measure, hospitals, associations, satisfaction vendors have generally come out opposed for a variety of reasons, some valid, some just nonsense. This is where Customer Experience Management (CEM)applied to healthcare comes in. However, and let me be clear about this, CEM is more than just looking at your patient satisfaction scores. Satisfaction data can be important in pointing out areas of needed experience improvement, but it is just one data source. What you really need to do is talk to your customers. That's right, talk to your customers with one caveat. Do not talk to your customers until you have analyzed your satisfaction data. If you haven't analyzed your satisfaction data please see my book How to Use Patient Satisfaction Data to Improve Healthcare Quality . Do not talk to your customers unt...

Before we go much further, I would like to make a correction in terminology. In an interesting discussion on LinkedIn, a physician pointed out that Experience Management is applicable to physicians as well. I had assumed that individuals understood via earlier posts. My mistake. Using the word patient places models and systems in boxes in which we tend to forget, that this is applicable across all customer segments. Going forward I will no longer write about Patient Experience Management, but about Customer Experience Management (CEM) applied to healthcare.   The time has come to see people as they really are, whether they be doctors, insurance companies, individual, donors, patients etc., as individual customers with experiences that we need to understand like never before to improve quality and reduce cost. To quote Paul Harvey..."Now for the rest of the story"..... Customer Experience Management is understanding your customer and their experiences so thoroughly, that you ...

There are any number of reasons for beginning the Experience Management movement. Many of my readers have more or less begun some type of Customer Experience Management (CEM) or Patient Experience Management (PEM) process. So this post is really for those who still need some prodding in the hospital and health system segment of the healthcare industry and most specialty pharmacies to a large extent. Consumer Choice of Provider is Based in Experience In a McKinsey study published in November 2007, McKinsey Quarterly -A Better Hospital Experience , they found that the majority of 2,000 commercial insurance and Medicare patients surveyed would change hospitals to receive a better experience. It was also shown that only 20% of a patients choice is based on the clinical care experience or reputation, 41% is on the nonclinical experience while the remaining 39% is based on doctors recommendation. The most surprising finding, was that of the 100 physicians also surveyed, that they are ...