Once healthcare consumers make it through your digital front door, are they experiencing your organization and care at the level you aspire to deliver?
To improve consumer experience, healthcare organizations are heavily investing in digital. Increasingly though, payers, providers, and healthcare service leaders are evaluating broader strategies to improve patient experience and build brand loyalty.
One fundamental question we are exploring with our healthcare clients is how the digital patient journey transcends the reality of the physical patient care experience. After all, it is the end-to-end experience with the brand – everything from finding and scheduling care to visiting your doctor and paying your bill – that fosters brand loyalty, high patient survey ratings, and improved net promotor scores.
The Digital to Physical Crosswalk in Healthcare
To this end we help our clients explore the crosswalk from digital to physical domains of engagement. This process evaluates how a brand achieves its promise and desired experience across digital and physical touch points, giving a nod to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and its many ‘Strategies for Improving Patient Experience with Ambulatory Care’ across five key domains:
- Access to care and information
- Communication with patients
- Coordination of care
- Customer service
- Health promotion/education
Shortsighted Focus
Strategies that only focus on the digital front door services, while robust, are seemingly incomplete. Consumer expectations center on personalized, integrated experiences across the spectrum of care.
Since experience is really a product of emotion, we recognize the impact of numerous touch points in a health consumer’s journey. And those experience can be affected during a variety of digital, marketing, clinical, and operational interactions.
We see opportunities for healthcare organizations to influence patient perception across the continuum of care in areas such as:
- Online scheduling and scheduling optimization
- Virtual triage to the right care at the right time
- On-demand transportation coordination
- Navigating a newly diagnosed medical condition
- Timely reminders and interventions through a variety of modalities
- Help with care in the home, post discharge
…the list goes on.
Clarity Across the Full Healthcare Journey
As a digital innovator, Perficient plans and executes strategies that drive end-to-end, intentional health consumer experiences, in an environment where empowered consumers call the shots and increasingly make choices based on experience. Are you ready to meet their needs?
Contact us today to discuss your consumer experience vision and goals.
References:
- The Beryl Institute defines the patient experience as “the sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization’s culture, that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care” (The Beryl Institute, 2019).
- Alkire (née Nasr), L., O’Connor, G. E., Myrden, S., & Köcher, S. (2020). Patient experience in the digital age: An investigation into the effect of generational cohorts. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 57, 102221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102221
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Ambulatory Care Improvement Guide: Section 6 – Strategies for Improving Patient Experience with Ambulatory Care. https://www.ahrq.gov/cahps/quality-improvement/improvement-guide/6-strategies-for-improving/index.html
