Patients today want healthcare encounters to mirror the experiences they have in other sectors, like retail or e-commerce. They are looking for and expect ease, convenience, consistency and transparency. For many reasons, however, hospitals and health systems often find it difficult to meet these rising consumer expectations.
During a Becker's Hospital Review webinar sponsored by NICE Systems, four patient experience experts discussed how healthcare organizations can improve and optimize the patient experience with a unified patient interaction strategy. The participants were:
- Katie Boemecke, senior director of patient experience, Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City
- Annamarie Cutroneo, vice president of operations, Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, N.J.
- Marcus Garcia, vice president of healthcare, NICE Systems
- Tamra Lopez, director of clinical operations, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Hospitals in Plantation, Fla.
Five key takeaways were:
- A digital strategy is the cornerstone of a consistent, holistic patient journey. Patients don't want or expect to have a separate digital experience, contact center experience and mobile experience. They simply want to have one single experience that incorporates many different touch points. "That can be challenging, because healthcare organizations often have disparate systems," Mr. Garcia said. "They must develop a digital interaction strategy that aligns with all aspects of the patient experience."
Jersey Shore University Medical Center's digital team, for example, has established a patient access center that uses technology like interactive text messaging to schedule appointments and meet patients' immediate needs. "In some ambulatory areas, we use text messages for appointment reminders to decrease no-show rates and to offer follow-up appointments," Ms. Cutroneo said. "Improving access to care and getting people in front of doctors more quickly improves outcomes and engages patients in a better experience with us."
- Patient preferences must be an integral part of patient interaction strategies. Before rolling out digital initiatives, organizations must be sure that they understand and are meeting real patient needs. University of Miami Hospitals leverages feedback from its patient and family advisory council before launching new programs. Intermountain Healthcare also takes a similar approach. "We are doing a lot of assessment in our surveys to ensure that all patients can give us the feedback needed to drive change," Ms. Boemecke "We are trying to weave patients from all communities we serve into our patient and family advisory councils."
- Based on those preferences, healthcare organizations must balance digital and personal interactions. For some tasks, such as appointment scheduling, patients are looking for fast, convenient and easy communication options. For other tasks or interactions, people often prefer to speak to a person. "At many health systems, scheduling represents half or more of the calls coming in. If you can automate those, that enables employees to spend quality time with those patients who need human interactions," Mr. Garcia said. It's important to remember that the intent of technology solutions isn't to replace the human touch entirely. The goal is to free time, so team members can have more meaningful personal interactions with patients.
- Organizational issues are one of the biggest hurdles to a unified patient interaction strategy. Often, organizational disconnects are built into hospitals and health systems. One department may be responsible for digital, one may run the contact center and another may be responsible for handling patient feedback. Meanwhile, the IT team is tasked with collecting data and there's an EHR system in the middle of everything. "When it comes to patient interaction strategies, making the technology pieces work together isn't particularly challenging," Mr. Garcia said. "It's the organizational aspects of getting everyone on the same page and working together that are tough."
To address these disconnects, Intermountain Healthcare has established an organizational governance structure for patient experience. Although patient experience-related work reports to different leaders, a united governance structure provides umbrella oversight. "Teams report to an experience steering committee once a month and that group reports to our enterprise leadership team," Ms. Boemecke said. "We're proud of that high-level alignment. It keeps us moving in the same direction and breaks down silos."
- All stakeholders must play a role in patient interaction strategy development. At University of Miami Hospitals, patient experience works hand in hand with IT on every initiative. "Engaging stakeholders early and making sure that's at the forefront is important," Ms. Lopez said. "We can't provide quality care without ensuring that people have an optimal experience. At the same time, we need the right infrastructure on the back end so providers aren't overwhelmed." Mr. Garcia agreed. "Everything is better when a broad population of stakeholders has a hand in evaluating plans," he said. "The outcomes of those initiatives are better, time to value is faster and adoption is quicker."
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