Featured in HealthcareBusiness News
Today’s patients are empowered like never before, choosing how and where they receive care while expecting seamless, personalized experiences—just as they do in other industries like finance and hospitality—but today’s healthcare ecosystem has not evolved with expectations.
One of the most common complaints patients have about their experiences consuming healthcare is that they don’t feel “seen.” Whether it be the basic human element of eye contact during medical appointments or anticipating their needs and proactively driving toward the next best actions at every touchpoint across their increasingly virtual care journey — healthcare does not “see” its patients in their entirety.
It isn’t that we don’t have the data to see them. Healthcare generates 30% of the world’s data, growing 35% annually. A typical hospital generates twice the amount of data each year of the entire Library of Congress. The challenge is that the data sits in silos across a complex ecosystem, and due to data fidelity and interoperability challenges, it isn’t leveraged. Missing and incomplete data coupled with the fact that systems of clinical record such as EHRs, systems of experience such as CRMs, and systems of insight such as cloud data platforms are not easily connected to share and consume aggregated patient and consumer data. All of this leads to a limited view at each touchpoint of a patient’s journey.
Acting on those limited views hurts the quality of care and hinders the transition to value-based care. It also inhibits healthcare’s ability to grow and respond to the changing attitudes and consumer preferences of patients. Reconnecting with patients and seeing them in their entirety will require healthcare to change its perception.
The balance shifts – patients as consumers
Healthcare routinely delivers breakthroughs and innovations in clinical care but falls behind in how it evolves to address patients’ changing preferences for how they consume and engage with their healthcare services, creating a disconnect between providers and patients. Patients have made it clear that they want their healthcare experience to be more like Delta Airlines, Amazon or Ritz Carlton — brands that have adopted a customer-first approach, and they aren’t afraid to switch. In fact, according to an Accenture study, younger patients are six times more likely to switch providers.
Without that personalized experience, patients place less emphasis on establishing a long-term relationship with a primary care provider (PCP) and more on convenience, accessibility and transparency. At the same time that long-term consumer relationships are eroding, healthcare organizations can no longer rely on traditional entry points for patients like PCPs where the younger generations are much less likely to even have a PCP. Additionally, traditional advertising methods such as corporate sponsorships, billboards or TV commercials are becoming less effective, as generational engagement trends shift. Shifting engagement trends demand more innovative and adaptive approaches to effectively connect with patients.
Healthcare has largely failed to recognize this shift in the power balance between patients and providers. It is no longer a “field of dreams, build it and they will come” marketplace. Patients want to be seen, and to be understood and known. Adopting a customer-first approach means that every step in the patient journey takes into account their complete clinical history, consent and personal preferences to create a personalized, highly intuitive and engaged experience across the care continuum.
To meet patient expectations, healthcare providers, payers and systems should continue to turn toward a customer 360 approach, leveraging more advanced digital outreach and experience management informed by a complete and accurate longitudinal view of the patient journey. But for these efforts to succeed, they must be built on a foundation of accurate patient identity.
Achieving customer 360: The need to know who is who at every touchpoint
Managing patient and provider identity is fundamental to healthcare. At its most basic level it means making sure the right medication is given to the right patient and that the correct lab results are attached to the proper record. But it’s more complicated than that.
To deliver the best possible care, maximize patient engagement, and support patient acquisition and retention strategies for growth, healthcare organizations need a complete and unified view of patients and their entire care journeys.
Healthcare master data management (hMDM) solutions enable a complete and trusted 360-degree view of consumers, patients, members and providers. Using hMDM to bridge the gap between systems of record, systems of experience and systems of insight, healthcare organizations can truly know who is who at every touchpoint. This allows organizations to:
- Achieve a complete and accurate longitudinal view of a person, aggregating high fidelity consumer, patient and provider data across disparate system silos — building a unified data foundation for strategic Customer360 initiatives.
- Deliver personalized care experiences that exceed patient expectations while improving outcomes, efficiency and retention.
- Enable care providers to make the best next action, minimizing the risk of medical errors and allowing for personalized care plans.
- Support responsible deployment of AI based on high fidelity data training sets, driving more accurate and trusted results.
- Equip front-office teams with accurate, up-to-date patient information, creating better patient experiences and care gap closures in call centers and other patient touchpoints.
- Empower marketing leaders to execute more personalized, effective campaigns, increasing patient outreach and driving growth.
Patient identity is the foundation
As healthcare evolves, so must providers’ strategies for managing patient relationships. Success in the new era of healthcare requires not only knowing who the patient is but having a deep, trusted understanding of their entire journey. This unified, consumer-driven approach to identity management is essential for creating personalized experiences that drive better health outcomes as well as business growth.
About the author: Clay Ritchey is CEO of Verato, offering the industry’s first hMDM, the next-generation MDM for healthcare.