How can a better patient experience drive KPIs?
The impact of a great patient experience
For leaders across the healthcare ecosystem, the push toward patient experience may feel like the latest industry jargon driving you to add another thing to a never ending list of priorities.
But by allocating resources (either through building your own patient-experience team or carving out budget to work with outside firms like ours), you will quickly realize that your investment opens up new opportunities for top line growth, improves existing products and services, and drives strategic alignment across functional groups.
Evolving from patient-centered to human centered
However, patients’ aren’t the only perspective that matters. A variety of internal (and external) influences impact the patient’s experience from the moment they walk through the doors for care, connect with a virtual team member, or use an app.
At Upstream, we’re huge advocates for a human-centric design approach which takes into account the needs of all stakeholders in the ecosystem. To shift successfully to a patient-centric strategy, it’s essential for organizations to establish a holistic view by considering the needs of front stage actors (those who interact with the patient), backstage actors (those responsible for the front stage infrastructure), as well as those of the patient. Insights from all stakeholder groups will best inform design decisions that drive desired outcomes. A human-centered approach ensures you’re designing for both patient desirability and internal feasibility, increasing the likelihood of buy-in and adoption along the way.
Improving metrics with a human-centered approach
No matter what type of organization you’re leading, you’re likely struggling with lots of data that explains WHAT is happening but no insights as to WHY or HOW to solve for it. As uncomfortable as that can feel, it’s actually the perfect starting point for a human-centered approach.
To get you started, here are a handful of common patient-experience challenges that can be addressed with a thoughtful, human-centered approach:
Dissappointing tech utilization rates
Products and services created without an understanding of stakeholder adoption behaviors will have significant experience gaps that limit usage. This is often a result of poor patient alignment and/or difficulties in delivery of the offering.
Low satisfaction scores
Satisfaction surveys are great at painting a general picture of what’s working well and what isn’t but, they’re woefully inadequate for guiding the design of a better experience. Deeper insights are needed on human needs, desires and motivations to inform strategic investments.
Poor adherence to programs / interventions
Programs and interventions that require habitual use often miss the mark in connecting the stages of a habit loop to keep people engaged and maintain commitment to treatment.
Inadequate diagnosis of disease
Incidence and prevalence rates of a disease can indicate barriers and unmet needs along the path to diagnosis for not only patients, but care partners and providers as well.
High readmission rates
Understanding the lives of patients and care partners outside of the hospital setting will unlock new opportunities for designing the patient experience and helping patients to better self-manage the conditions repeatedly driving them back to the ER.
Being more than six months into a global pandemic means that we now have perspective in our data. The pressures of this pandemic have likely exposed deep fissures where there were once only hairline cracks in the patient experience. This presents a huge and timely opportunity for those working to improve patient experience, products, services and business KPIs. Now is the ideal time to embrace a human-centered approach and tackle these challenges head on.
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