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The field of medicine is always changing and growing, and there have been unprecedented levels of accelerated transformation in recent years. But as this has happened, the ecosystem of the healthcare sector has become increasingly complex, making it less efficient, more siloed,and more difficult to deliver a cohesive customer experience in healthcare.
These complications are in direct conflict with what today’s patients want and need. Especially after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers are more interested than ever before in digital solutions to engage with healthcare professionals.
These digital tools mean the medical sector has an opportunity to rethink how healthcare happens. The patient experience isn’t defined by just the visit to the hospital or the doctor’s office. Much more of their experience is happening digitally. This includes things like scheduling,billing and payments, insurance, and even virtual appointments.
Moving forward, healthcare organizations need to look at the digital healthcare customer experience (CX) as a way to improve patient care and foster lasting relationships.
About Customer Experience Management in Healthcare
Customer experience (CX) in healthcare focuses on how patients view their interactions with healthcare systems. Setting up an appointment, using an online patient portal, viewing a test result, or asking a doctor a question; these are all part of the customer experience. Offline, this can also include things like waiting room experiences and bedside manner, but in many cases,these factors can also be influenced by the overall quality of the digital customer experience as well.
Thinking about CX for healthcare, or the customer journey map for healthcare, is still kind of anew idea. HIPAA regulations for data compliance have kept many healthcare providers and networks from really embracing digital innovation. It’s no secret that digital adoption presents headaches in the healthcare sector surrounding regulatory, compliance, and legal issues. A digital customer experience means additional work in order to stay compliant with legislation like HIPAA.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought us many new innovations. These emerging customer experience trends in healthcare include expanded options for virtual appointments, online charting, and telehealth services. All of these options are still relatively new and there hasn’t been much time to refine the overall customer experience. Even so, healthcare companies including billing, telehealth platforms, insurance providers, provider networks, electronic records management companies, and others who work in the healthcare sector can’t afford to break patient trust through a series of miscommunications or frustrating, confusing customer experiences.
However, because healthcare is so complex, it’s easy for the CX, or customer relationship management in healthcare, to be subpar. The systems that support a healthcare journey are numerous—and each of these solutions only supports a small sliver of the entire patient experience. With so many solutions in play, it’s easy for the journey to become disconnected, a sit often does. Getting information to all of these teams, solutions, and providers to guide the patient’s journey from one touch point to another is nearly impossible.
The result? The entire concept of healthcare customer experience management is far more nuanced than in other industries—and it requires a much more refined, personalized approach for each customer. Without a centralized, intentional customer experience strategy, it’s hard for patients to not feel as though they get lost in the shuffle. Customer experience management in healthcare is about unifying all these solutions, eliminating silos, and creating a more connected experience for patients.
The Opportunity for Great CXM in Healthcare
The healthcare sector’s technology infrastructure is growing and expanding as digital platforms that power patient care expand. And yet, they each operate with their own functions and goals,and don’t plug into one another. Those asking how to improve customer experience in healthcare must start by addressing the disconnect.
This technology infrastructure is far-reaching in the healthcare sector. There are tools to empower electronic health records, opportunities for digital patient-reported information, access to public health data, lab data, pharmacy data, mobile devices, IoT medical devices, clinical trial platforms, and more.
Although these tools are aimed at maximizing efficiency for their own functional areas, they create a more fragmented, distributed ecosystem. As a result, CX in healthcare is found to be lacking.
In fact, in a survey of 2,000 consumers, 62 percent said they believed the healthcare system is purposefully confusing. Additionally, 66 percent of consumers believe that they are asked to manage too many of their own care-related tasks.
Industry leaders are starting to take note of this. Dr. Stephen Klasko, president and CEO of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health in Philadelphia shared recently that, “Healthcare has been allowed to be the one sector that has escaped the consumer revolution.”
Furthermore, almost 60 percent of industry executives surveyed (out of 115 respondents) by the Harvard Business Review Analytic Services state that improving CX is their top priority, over better efficiency and higher revenues.
The point? Poor CX in healthcare is expected in some ways—but it puts a drain on companies that strain under the inefficiencies, redundant tasks and web of different teams involved that don’t share information. Industry executives are waking up to the importance of great customer experience management in healthcare, and while change is happening, curating a great customer experience can be a key differentiator for healthcare organizations.
Improved access to patient interactions across the entire journey, even when it happens outside their systems or teams with a partner, can change the game for healthcare corporations. When patients have access to their own data and can better communicate with providers (no matter where they are), they can make more informed decisions about their care. Plus, they will be happier with the overall CX and with their choice of healthcare networks and care teams.
What Healthcare Customer Experience Management Can Do
Healthcare CX management is about more than just making an online visit or digital charting simpler and easier for patients. It can expand the way doctors and medical networks care for their patients. Here are just a few of the ways that a great customer experience can impact the healthcare sector:
More Personalized Communication:
A focus on CX in healthcare means that you can reach out to patients in new, more individualized ways. That includes emailing exam confirmations or appointment reminders,developing customized dietary or treatment plans based on individual patient data and health stats, providing custom recommendations to help patients achieve their health goals, and even discovering and sharing early warning signs or points of concern based on a patient’s medical history.
Between smart email marketing platforms and the widespread use of machine learning tools,these kinds of proactive steps can be an integral part of a patient’s digital CX, foster open lines of communication, and build lasting relationships with their care providers.
Keep Operating Costs Low:
The healthcare industry is stretched thin enough as it is, and a focus on CX strategies can help alleviate some of the concerns regarding an over committed provider with tools like digital intake,online scheduling, and even self-service tools to request prescription refills, etc.
What’s more, many consumers have concerns about seeking medical care because it can become (in some cases) prohibitively expensive. Integrating smart CX tools can help providers do things like optimize their patient flows, bundle treatment, and standardize contracts, all of which keep costs down.
Keep Wait Times Down:
The average time a patient had to wait for an appointment in 2022 was 26 days, 8 percent longer than in 2017. And wait times can extend far longer than that. In San Diego, the average time to get an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon is 55 days, and it takes an average of 56days to get an appointment in an Obstetrics & Gynecology department anywhere in Philadelphia.
Wait times in the emergency room or doctor’s office can also take a while. Average emergency room wait times range between 24.1 and 48.7 minutes, depending on the visit volume of the hospital.
But wait times have a lot to do with the customer experience—and can be addressed, as least in large part, through CXM strategies. One report showed that 62 percent of surveyed patients said long hold times played a huge role in their choice of healthcare providers.
Tools to help limit wait time frustrations include:
● Chatbots, FAQ pages, and self-service menus to help patients get answers to simple questions.
● Self-service check-ins on mobile devices to prevent waiting in line at a front desk. This also frees up office staff to tackle more complicated tasks.
● Automated and self-service digital appointment scheduling.
● Online patient portals where patients can access and manage medical information quickly and securely.
● Live chat agents to answer questions about billing, scheduling, and other issues in a timely manner, even outside of regular office hours.
Increase Transparency:
Consumers want transparency from every brand they engage with, and nowhere is this more true than in their own care. Patients want to know that they can trust their healthcare provider—and one way to foster this relationship is for networks and providers to be as upfront as possible with their patients. One of the biggest factors of why customer experience matters in health care comes down to establishing patient trust and in turn, delivering improved care.
One of the biggest places to build trust and increase transparency is through cost. The other is providing access to clear, understandable information about a patient’s medical history and treatment.
By making healthcare more transparent and accessible through digital channels, patients feel more empowered and providers can build their reputations as reliable, trustworthy medical professionals. This can translate directly into increased retention rates and more referrals.
Other Impacts:
There are plenty of ways that customer experience management can impact the healthcare industry. These include:
● 24/7 patient access to medical records, answers to non-emergent questions, and expanded access to remote patient care through virtual care options.
● Workflow automation for repetitive tasks means professionals are freed up to provide better, more attentive care.
● Opportunities for patient feedback to continuously improve patient care.
Take Charge of Customer Experience Management in Healthcare
A quality customer experience is important for any organization, but it’s becoming especially important in the healthcare industry now that there’s been an increased rate of digital adoption.Add to this the growing dissatisfaction with treatment delays and expensive medical bills, and it’s clear to see that a smart healthcare CXM strategy can really have a positive impact on patient care and healthcare organizations’ reputations and business outcomes.
Working toward a great healthcare customer experience means having an orchestration platform to support the full customer journey, unlocking siloed information to provide a unified view of the patient in all business units, teams, and ecosystem partners who are involved in any aspect of patient management.
At OvationCXM, our whole focus is on managing and optimizing the customer experience. We’ll help you take a look at every part of the customer experience and give you the tools and the platform to craft a CX where patients feel seen and heard.
These tools will help you oversee the entire customer journey at a glance, remove friction from patient customer journeys, and provide better care. Ready to learn more? Connect with our team today!
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