“Consumer” is a word some healthcare industry members resist, wary that it reduces patients to a transactional label. Heather Geisler, executive vice president and chief brand and experience officer of Henry Ford Health in Detroit, doesn’t share that hesitation.
“I have always advocated for leading with consumers as a way of describing those we serve,” Ms. Geisler said on an upcoming episode of the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.”
Her reasoning centers on what the word implies about the power of choice. To Ms. Geisler, being called a consumer signals that a person has options, and that the choice isn’t limited to which hospital or physician to see. It extends to whether to seek care at all, an autonomy she said healthcare too often glosses over.
“I really think it’s an empowering term,” she said. “When you think about a consumer, a consumer has choice.”
The framing lines up with a broader shift occurring in the industry, as health systems increasingly merge access, patient and consumer experience work under the oversight of chief experience officers. Traditionally, patient experience work focused largely on care given within healthcare settings. That has since expanded, as health systems recognize that experience work should encompass a patient’s broader healthcare journey, such as finding a physician and scheduling appointments, Rick Evans, strategic advisor to New York City-based NewYork-Presbyterian, wrote in a recent column for Becker’s.
Ms. Geisler, who previously served as senior vice president of global brands for Hyatt Hotels Corp., said she’s never treated the patient and consumer experience as distinct. Patients, in her view, move through one continuous journey rather than a series of separate encounters with separate departments.
That view has shaped a multiyear effort to rebuild the health system’s website, contact center, scheduling and referral processes to create more seamless, consistent experiences. Patients accustomed to booking flights or managing money online, she said, expect the same ease from healthcare and increasingly want to solve problems themselves rather than call and wait.
“How are we creating environments and systems and policies and processes that not only help them find the right care, but make seeking that care a positive experience,” she said.
That instinct also points to a gap Ms. Geisler sees in how the industry measures experience. Standard experience metrics, such as wait times, satisfaction scores and digital engagement, tend to miss what’s actually hardest for patients to carry.
“What’s really harder to measure, and what doesn’t often show up on those dashboards, is the emotional burden of navigating healthcare,” Ms. Geisler said. “For our patients, we know that that means they want clarity. They want simplicity. They want consistency. They don’t want every time they call to have a different kind of experience, to have to keep telling you the same data and information that they already told you over and over. They want respect.”
