Chapter - I
A. Understanding the importance of the 'customer' in modern healthcare
There are quite a lot of times when customers get annoyed and frustrated waiting for the customer care person to answer their queries. Customers face the same frustration when they visit a shop; either the sales person is busy, not available, not cooperative or simply reluctant. In such situations the customer decreases the frequency of visit to the shop after few initial visits. Due to this the management might lose its valuable customers one by one. After all "Customers are the management's business", without customers the management might fail to exist. In such situations the role of customer service or Customer Experience Management (CEM) is unavoidable, which helps to retain the customers.
The above mentioned applies for healthcare industry also as it is one of the rapidly developing sectors. In healthcare sector patients are the customers, they are the consumers of healthcare services and not a mere person with some ailments. Similar to CEM, Patient Experience Management (PEM) is applied to healthcare industry. By managing the experience of a customer from the very first contact the management will help a satisfied customer to become a loyal customer and then a brand advocate or promoter. Customer satisfaction and relationship management are very important for an overall development and success of an organization. They are the key promoters playing crucial role as a determining factor in transforming a simple customer to advocates who would not only continue to use the services but also recommend it to others. Many healthcare centers have realized the need and importance to know more about their current and future customers.
If customers are not satisfied with the care and services they receive at a healthcare center, they will not bother to come back no matter how good the clinical outcome is. In addition, the customers will not recommend that particular healthcare center to others and will tell everyone how bad they felt during their visit. The more efficient service the healthcare center provides the further they will go in retaining the customers. Customer experience will determine the success of a business in long run. A mere change in the administration and business process does not help to deliver superior customer experience; it requires customer focussed management called Patient/customer experience management.
PEM survey
Understanding the need of PEM and in an effort to focus more on PEM many healthcare centers are now focusing on PEM surveys. PEM surveys helps the healthcare center to know more about their customer needs; the more they know about customer needs the more effective they can respond to their current needs and also predict the customers future needs. But many such PEM surveys do not help in bringing the change that is expected from them. The failure of many such PEM surveys are because
- The results of these surveys get delayed and never reach the intended respondent
- The survey falls short of actionable information
- The time that an organization spends in conducting such surveys are considered waste as the "at risk" customer relation remains undetected
- Very little is done with the results of these surveys to analyze what matters most to the patients and their willingness to use or recommend the services to others.
Unfortunately, many PEM surveys are used as a tool to highlight how better an organization is than another in the same field. By this an organization might enjoy short-term advertising benefits but fail to address the fundamental needs of the customer and in making advocates out of them.
B. Financial implications of poor Patient Experience
It is a known fact that financial performance, safety, and quality still occupy the top of priority list of healthcare center. But fortunately, many healthcare centers are now realizing that patient experience has a significant role in improving all the above mentioned priorities. For future business sustainability today's healthcare center need to provide positive customer experience in offering quality products and services to its customers. The customer's experience in a healthcare center affects the way the local community perceives the healthcare center and this reflects how well the business is running. The revenue improvement of a healthcare center should be viewed from patient's perspective.
Financial performance of any healthcare center is a patient driven factor and its improvement completely depends on patient's experience. Even a single negative experience matters because though the customer might have had many previous positive experiences with the healthcare center than negatives, the later always makes a deep long-lasting impact in the customers mind. This means that every single experience counts and a single negative experience results in negative marketing. Customers keep changing or choose their providers/healthcare center depending on their previous experience. The quality of relationship shown by the healthcare center is the major predictor of patient's loyalty. Making sure that the customers are happy and satisfied really makes a big difference, than the management realizes, on the financial outcome of a healthcare center.
The center for Medicare and Medicaid services is considering including the results of PEM survey as a part of pay-for-performance program. To sustain in the current competitive market every healthcare center should ask themselves - What are we doing to deliver a positive experience to customers as our revenue depends on them? It would not be wrong to say that patient relationship or customer experience has become a business requirement.
C. What matters to patients, relatives, carers and other service users?
Many healthcare centers are competing for patients on the basis of amenities such as private rooms, beautiful lobbies, and hotel style room services. But the relation between amenities and clinical care is ambiguous. Unaware patients are normally drawn towards such amenities without considering the quality of service and care that is been provided. It's quite sad that hospitals spend more on such amenities to attract insured customers than concentrating on the basic needs of the customers.
The magic mantra to attract customers is no hotel-style service but it is "patient-centered service". Knowing what matters to patients, relatives and other service users does not mean asking for a wish-list, it's about knowing things that really matters to them while visiting a healthcare center. Understanding the needs of the customer should be aided with improved ability to listen to them and respond immediately. Many patients complain that their doctor try to push them out even before they start explaining their problems. Healthcare centers should remember that customers experience with doctor affects the patient's emotional response either positively or negatively. Patients feel that the actual wait time is hours and the face time with doctor is just few seconds. What every patient want from their physician is some personal attention. Customers want services that are tailored according to their needs, which meet the best treatment and outstanding customer experience. Patients feel that participating in their own health care needs will help them have a positive outcome. Customers demand patient-centered healthcare services that respect their individual needs, preferences and values. Healthcare organizations should make sure that their staffs treat patients, their relatives, carers, and other service users with dignity and respect.
Few basic things that customers expect from their healthcare providers are
- Eye contact while talking or discussing with them
- Patients should be a partner in decisions and choices made for them
- Patients should be treated as a lively person, rather than a symptom
- They want doctors to patiently give ears to what they say
- Patients should not feel like entering in to an alien territory, communication should be made easy and comfortable from both sides
- They want doctors to spend time with them to be able to explain their problems and to be explained by the doctor
- Thoughtful and courteous staff
- They want to be treated with respect and dignity
- Doctors should talk positively and encourage them to keep things under control
- Doctors should give them the required support
- A safe and high quality treatment is expected
Precisely, they demand a "Patient centered service" with high quality treatment, required support, and want to be an active partner rather than a passive recipient in their care. Everybody likes choices, for patients some choices are more significant than others. For patients, choice of care and treatment is more important than choice of provider.
D. Experience as a core driver of patient's choice
In today's cut-throat competitive world, customers are considered the king of any business. To maintain its competitiveness it is important that every organization keeps its customers happy and satisfied. To move ahead of competitors it is important to satisfy the needs of customers. Customer satisfaction depends on the service provided by the healthcare centers in relation to customer's expectations. If the customer is dissatisfied or fairly satisfied they can easily switch to some other healthcare center along the way.
It is quite natural that customers prefer and continue to go to a healthcare center based on their previous experience. Many customers say that non-clinical experience is as important as clinical reputation of the healthcare center in making choices. Experience is the key driver in deciding whether the customer wants to go back to the same healthcare center or wish to change the provider. There are maximum and increasing numbers of evidences showing that addressing customers needs in healthcare leads to improved healthcare outcome. When the customer's experience is positive his perception is also positive and the clinical outcome is also more likely to be positive. This positive experience will make the customer go back to the same healthcare center and also share it with friends and family. So making sure that the patient had a nice positive experience in the healthcare center will make patients visit again.
Healthcare industries exist only to serve people. When trying to evaluate and compare different healthcare systems patient experience is very crucial. Today healthcare centers are facing tremendous pressure in delivering effective clinical and financial results but unfortunately at the expense of patient experience. But however, healthcare centers are ready to accept that patient experience can have a major effect on both clinical and financial outcome of their organization.
Retaining and satisfying the old customers is as difficult as finding another new customer. Hence, to make sure that customers come back to their organization to receive the best quality treatment and the best customer experiences all healthcare centers should give importance to customers so that no customer is lost just for a simple reason - poor service. Every healthcare center should remember that nothing makes a customer happy and come back than attention and courteousness from the healthcare provider.
The author is CEO of InfocusRx. InfocusRx expertise is in developing branding roadmap and implementation of customer experience management strategies for healthcare community through simplified, informative and innovative branding and knowledge services.
URL- http://www.infocusrx.com/patient-experience-management
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