How can service recovery impact the patient experience?

Mistakes happen; for as healthcare organizations we are only human. And those errors whether they are care or everyday decisions can impact the patient experience positively or negatively. So the question becomes do you recognize when service recovery is needed acting swiftly and decisively, or do you wait until there is a complaint and then act after it was already realized that an error occurred?

I think it’s a valid question from a marketing standpoint for several reasons. With the growth of social media and actively engaged adults, they have become the new paparazzi and can do wide spread reputational damage in literarily the blink of an eye.  Taking accountability and doing what is right improves the patient experience and satisfaction scores. And finally, when everyone is talking about what a high quality provider they are and to look no further, service recovery can positively impact brand by reinforcing the brand promise and brand message.

For example, I take 4,000mg daily of pharmaceutical grade fish oil to help me manage high triglycerides.  I am also in an auto ship program with omegavia. Lovaza is not on the drug formulary for my PBM so I worked with my physician to find a suitable replacement. Well in November I received two emails on the same day that my monthly supply has shipped. I thought that maybe an error had occurred and a duplicate email was sent out.  Sure enough the next day I received two separate shipments of my fish oil.

I contacted omegavia and talked to the off hours answering service and was told I would receive a call the next day. I also explained in the initial call that I wanted my December shipment suspended until January 2014.

The call did come the next day, but it wasn’t the please explain to us what happened call. The call was the customer service representative apologizing for the double shipment.  They were suspending my shipment in December and would resume in January 2014. Oh and that there was no charge for the second shipment because it was their error. Not only did I receive the call, but a confirmation email as well.

The omegavia service recovery effort was: timely; accurate, responsive, courteous; exceedingly satisfactory; improved the experience; and made me a customer evangelist.

And it does have a financial impact to the company in terms of the free months dose, the suspension of one month shipment, as well as shipping and handling costs of probably around $120 or so. I know it’s not a great amount of money in the grand scheme of things, but the point is there was no hesitation on their part to make it right.

The real kicker in all of this was when they told me that they were proactively working with their shipping department to understand the root cause of the process failure and understand how the double shipment resulted to fix the process.   Notice here that they did not throw anyone under the bus or say it was some unnamed person on the back office somewhere or a computer error. They owned up, realized the process had a built in error potential and saw this as an opportunity to improve.

Now when was the last time in a hospital or health system service recovery efforts did all of the above take place?

Please don’t go down the, “well this is pharma and retail and we are different argument”. Not really. While omegavia operates in healthcare retail environment, hospitals and health systems are moving to a semi-retail environment. In this  environment where the healthcare consumer with high deductible plans are paying higher premiums with significant out-of-pocket expenses,  they will be expecting more from providers in the service recovery effort and patient experience. It is no longer about what the hospital or health system wants do, it’s about making the healthcare consumer, aka the patient, a customer evangelist and that can only be done through the patient experience and a service recovery process that is second to none.

Repeat after me, service recovery and experience is about the healthcare consumer not the hospital or health system.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did not receive any kind of remuneration either in payment or in-kind gifts.  This post was about my experience and where I believe hospitals and health systems need to go in their service recovery efforts as part of the  patient experience management program.

Michael J. Krivich, MHA, FACHE, PCM, is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views read in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. These views are my own. He is founder of the michael J group, a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.  Like us on facebook at the michael J group, and connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Does your patient experience fail the test?

True story.  "Well, you can always bring her back to the hospital if she still has trouble breathing", said the home health care nurse sent from the hospital less than 2 hours after a patient had been discharged.  Oh, and did I tell you that her eye was infected, almost fell going to the bathroom in the hospital and informed the nurse, had slurred speech and could barley ambulate?  That patient had been cleared by all to be discharged from the hospital.

And then the family hears or sees an ad about all the wonderful quality care awards from third parties that they receive, and how many lives would be saved if everyone was as good as them.

What do you think the now healthcare consumer, formally the patient thought?

Countless times every day, the patient experience goes fails the test.  Big things and small things alike that take place in the healthcare encounter all add up to one patient experience, good or bad. 

When healthcare executives are surveyed, the majority say that customer/patient experience management is a critical business success factor along with patient safety and cost reduction.  But at the same time, the majority of healthcare CEOs admit that they really don't know where to start on successfully managing the experience.

Experience management is about changing the way you interact with the individual or family from start to finish.  Not just managing the experience at isolated points along the care continuum. It's not about just focusing on service recovery like something was wrong with a hotel stay.  Managing the experience requires a complete understanding of what the patients expectations are, not yours. Experience management is culturally and organizationally uncomfortable. And that is because it's not about you anymore.

So when the patient experience fails, your reputation, your brand and your future in a risk or value-based payment environment fails as well. And then there are those readmissions penalties you face when a patient like this comes back in less than 30 days.

You should see what's being said on facebook and in social media circles from others that chime about how bad their experience was at that particular hospital. Do you still think social media is nothing more than a billboard?

Yep, the chuckle factor is really high when those quality award ads are heard and seen.  Pay attention to the patient experience, and pay attention to the marketing. They are not separated, but closely related.

The newly insured healthcare consumer is paying close attention now. It costing them money, they have too.

Michael J. Krivich, MHA, FACHE, PCM, is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views read in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. These views are my own. He is founder of the michael J group, a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executivesand a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.  Like us on facebook at the michael J group, and connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Is the time right for a patient experience focus in healthcare advertising?

Living in a large metropolitan area with some pretty well recognized system heavyweights and Academic Medical Centers, I am fortunate enough to see a good deal of hospital and health system advertising. Anyhow, happy smiling patients, doctors looking intently into a microscope, nice building exterior shots and high-tech equipment all promoting, something, but clearly not the brand. High production values and in most cases using hired talent instead of employees. The best one was a group of specialists standing and proudly discussing the quality of the air in the patient rooms. Really?

I have said it before and I am saying it again, where is the differentiation? And what does the statement: "We have surgical air quality in all the rooms", mean? Does it even matter to a potential patient. "Quick, take me to that academic medical center that has really clean air in the rooms!", said the patient. Really?

Food for thought

Healthcare is changing and marketing needs to change along with it. Especially on how we approach the market, differentiate our hospitals, communicate value and build brand. If we continue to portray ourselves as "gee whiz" look at us with all these high-tech tools and research and clean air, all the while telling the consumer its really all about you without offering up a strong brand promise and call-to-action, than what is the point of spending all that money?

The patient experience will differentiate you.

If you focused the ad concept, copy and visuals on the patient experience and how it all fits together for the patients benefit, then you are differentiating. It is no longer about you, but about the patient. You can still tell your story, but in a much more powerful and compelling way. You can create a recognizable brand promise and value equation which the consumer will understand.

Focus on the patient.

Focus on their needs.

Focus on the patient experience to drive revenue.

Focus on the patient experience to differentiate yourself.

Most healthcare organizations are frozen in time, even more so now with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. They are caught in a vicious planning cycle with no end in sight. Neither acting or reacting, most healthcare organizations are missing out on valuable market opportunities. They are doing what they have always done, approaching the market like consumers are idiots and are only impressed with high-tech machines, smiling happy patients, exterior building visuals and doctors looking into microscopes. There will be winners and losers. And that is already being determined while you wait and try to figure out what it all means.

Start meeting consumer needs and build your brand around experience and framing those expectations to your advantage.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group.

Are you getting ready to manage demand for healthcare services?

Now that the election is over and the course is more clearly outlined for implementation of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, you need to start thinking about demand management heading to 2014. Not demand generation, but demand management.

The role of healthcare marketing departments for the most part has been demand generation. Put "heads in the beds" and get paid for the production of care. Now, with a potential 40 million plus healthcare consumers having some type of insurance, the pent-up demand for healthcare services will be unleashed. That's good from the standpoint of the market in meeting the needs of healthcare consumers, but bad from the market standpoint of insufficient capacity to meet that demand.

Healthcare marketing departments are going to have to learn how to manage demand and move that demand for service to the appropriate care setting and medical practitioner. Market some services and de-market others.


And that is not an easy thing to do, because believe it or not, you are still going to have some demand generation but it will be very different that today. Not everyone will be in an ACO or medical home. Not everyone will be in Medicare or Medicaid. Not everyone will have employer sponsored insurance. Some will buy insurance in the insurance exchanges. Some may not even have insurance at all.

So while you are learning to more effectively to mange service demand in an environment of insufficient capacity with a healthcare consumer and patient who may be facing long waits to receive care, you will be generating demand for some healthcare consumers.

The demand generation part will come from targeting those individuals who have the means to pay privately and go outside of the normal channels to receive care. Private individuals who don't want to wait. American's hate to wait in queues anyway. Its cultural thing here. Have long waits for something or even rationing it, and people always find a way to get around it. So, healthcare marketers need to take advantage and attract those "private payers". It's not being mean or cruel, it is just a fact of life. But not every healthcare provider will be able to accomplish that feat.

Most healthcare organizations really aren't ready for the sophisticated marketing they will need to employ to manage demand. It's not a flip of the switch from marketing "things look pretty" and having a nice facebook page or web site, to understanding the complexity of the healthcare consumer and the demand for healthcare services. It takes a while to build that capacity. Your hardest decision may be understanding that you may not have the marketing operation resources, capital and human in place to get the job done. Its senior leadership admitting they don't know really all that much about marketing. And elevating marketing to the senior management table to bring that expertise.

Welcome to the new reality of healthcare marketing where demand management trumps making things look pretty and being an afterthought.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group. 

How intertwined is patient experience & outcomes?

Or another way of asking that question is, can you have a high quality patient experience and not be transparent regarding outcomes? I believe the two go hand-in-hand and are not separate from each other. Yet, when a healthcare organizations begin the patient experience improvement process, seldom do they consider how outcomes transparency will drive that experience.

Sometimes the patient's first experience with you is through your marketing. Think your new movers welcome program, community direct mailings, facebook, social media, web site, advertisements, press coverage and such. Long before they ever experience a service or encounter an employee, they have already started the experience process.

And outcomes data is usually nowhere to be found. The patient aka healthcare consumer, considers your transparency about outcomes to be part of that experience. The buzz in the media and articles is that there needs to be more outcomes information, beside pricing, so consumers can make informed decisions, or at the very least, be able to participate in the healthcare decision-making process. This establishes a pretty strong expectation on an individual's part that you will provide at some point that data to support the experience claims.

Experience you see is just isn't the hotel services, fast check-in or staff being pleasant and nice. It's about your quality outcomes. If you're not talking about your outcomes, then once again, you are really focused on the patient experience in its totality.

Now this is a scary value proposition for any number of healthcare organizations. Not necessarily for bad outcomes, but from becoming the transparent organization that shares its outcomes data with the patient in the experience process. Healthcare organizations can be secretive places even to their own staffs. So how do you think the patient feels when you talk about the experience yet don't talk about the outcomes?

The patient experience and outcomes are very intertwined. Your challenge is changing the organization and become more global and inclusive by including outcomes in your patient experience process. It is also your challenge to look at patient experience in its totality and not just in the diagnostic or treatment encounter.

Patients are expecting quality experiences and access to outcomes data. Same expectation with employees, payers and the government.

No way around it anymore. Time for healthcare organizations to step up and provide a complete patient experience, not just what they think the experience should be.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group. 

Why are you delaying the start to improve patient experience and satisfaction?

In the October 2012 issue of HealthLeaders, the article "Placing your Bets" contained a chart that caught my eye regarding the ranking of the top issues that are CEO priorities over the next three years. No surprise as improving patient experience and satisfaction is the No.2 priority over the next 3 years. Just like it has been for the past couple of years.

Which led me to wonder, are you out of time to start the process and do you really have three years?

Don't take me wrong, there has been some total patient experience improvement activity especially by some notable and prestigious healthcare organizations. For the rest of the healthcare industry, the majority of patient experience activities have focused on one or two clinical or diagnostic services isolated from the entire patient experience first touch-point to last.

Patient experience is built from the first time an individual comes in contact with you to the very last contact with all of the individual touch-points along the way playing a significant role. Satisfaction is a measure of part of that journey that focuses on the care experience. Which if you think about it, only cover one-third of the time that an individual is really a "patient".

Improving the patient experience and satisfaction is as much about changing the culture of the organization as it is improving the touch-points and process. And to change an organizational culture to improve the patient experience to bring the experience into alignment with satisfaction takes at least five years.

If you want to improve the patient experience and satisfaction scores, you have to focus on the organizational culture as much as the touch-points and processes of experience and satisfaction.

I started writing about patient experience management in January 2011. Even back then it was always listed in various CEO surveys has a high priority. You can search the blog for the whole series if you wish too. Make sure that you use the term customer experience as well.

Improving the patient experience or satisfaction scores is not like flipping a switch that when the time comes. It takes time, effort, market research by talking to your patients, process and touch-point improvement and change. And that takes time; a lot of it.

No red easy button here.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group.

How come you don’t talk to your patients and map the experience?

As I have written many times over the past few years, to fix patient experience you have to look at the entire patient experience journey from the first touch point to the last. That can only come from talking directly to your patients and completing an experience map. That means you have to talk to your patients, not just your employees, senior leadership or physicians. Patient satisfaction scores are not a proxy for engaging directly with patients in an experience map exercise.

With so much riding on experience today, I am still amazed at the number of healthcare organizations that treat patient experience like it is some isolated event that only happens within the four walls of a healthcare organization. That is old school and is a really dangerous way to live if you’re serious about your healthcare organization surviving in the years to come.

Is it that terrifying for you to have an honest to goodness face-to-face conversation with your patients to really understand their experience? I mean really, stop talking about being a Kaiser, Mayo or MD Anderson “wannabe” in the area of emulating their patient experience. Because unless you are willing to map the patent experience based on those patient conversations and not the guesses of employees, managers, physicians and leadership, it’s not going to improve.

Patients know more about you than you can possibly imagine and they are looking for reason to deselect you from their choice of providers. They do look to the Mayo and Kaiser experience, their reputation and what they have heard from a variety of sources, using that as the gold standard for patient experience and you know what, you are just not measuring up.

That is not to say you have to be a Mayo, Kaiser or MD Anderson. What that does mean is the you have to talk directly to your patients, map the experiences from beginning to end and then make changes across all of the patient touch points to create that exceptional patent experience. Without that, your patient experience improvement process and attempts are just hollow shells.

Here is another little secret too about improving patient experience.

Involve you marketing departments in patient experience process. Not to make things look pretty or design a nice logo for the effort, but to help you talk to your patients. It's not about you it's about them. Isn't that part of the reason of why you have a marketing department, to understand the needs of your customers and how they make healthcare purchase and utilization decisions? So, if marketing is not talking to your patients about their experience, then what makes you think you can change it?

And here's another thought, marketing should be leading the effort instead of clinicians or department managers. The reason why many healthcare organizations are successful in patient experience is because, they talk to their patient directly, map the experience from beginning to end and their marketing departments take clear leading roles in the patient experience process.

It's not rocket science. But it demands organizational change and looking from the outside in from the patients perspective. And that only comes from marketing talking directly to them and mapping it out.

Really, even in Great Britain with a single payer system in the National Health Service, talks to their patients and maps the experience.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group.

What happens when the patient experience falls apart?

True story. "Well, you can always bring her back to the hospital if she still has trouble breathing", said the home health care nurse from the hospital less than 2 hours after a patient had been discharged from the hospital. Oh, and did I tell you that her eye was infected, almost fell going to the bathroom in the hospital and informed the nurse, had slurred speech and could barley ambulate? Yes, that patient had been cleared by all to be discharged from the hospital.

Guess it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that she was back in the hospital via the ER at 3:30 A.M

And then the family hears an ad about all the wonderful quality care awards from third parties that they receive, and how many lives would be saved if everyone was as good as them.

What do you think the family thought?

The really sad part is that this healthcare experience is not atypical.

Countless times every day, the patient experience goes south in healthcare. Big things and small things alike that take place in the healthcare encounter all add up to one patient experience, good or bad.

When healthcare executives are surveyed, the majority say that customer/patient experience management is a critical business success factor along with patient safety and cost reduction. But at the same time, the majority of healthcare CEOs, admit that they really don't know where to start on successfully managing the experience.

Here's a clue.

Experience management is about changing the way you interact with the individual or family from start to finish. Not just managing the experience at isolated points along the care continuum. It's not about just focusing on service recovery like something was wrong with a hotel stay. Managing the experience requires a complete understanding of what the patients expectations are, not yours. Experience Management is culturally and organizationally uncomfortable. And that is because it's not about you anymore. It's also about providing the right care too.

So when the patient experience goes south, your reputation, your brand and your future in a risk or value-based payment environment goes south. And then there are those readmissions penalties you face when a patient like this comes back in less than 30 days.

You should see what's being said on facebook and in social media circles from others that chime about how bad their experience was at that particular hospital.

What is really sad, is that there has been no effort at any type of service recovery effort. No acknowledgement or even awareness of anything having gone wrong in the experience or being wrong at all.

Yep, the chuckle factor is really high when those quality award ads are heard.

Pay attention to the patient experience, and pay attention to the marketing. They are not separated, but closely related.

The healthcare consumer is paying close attention; especially when it's your mother that is the patient.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group.

Are we too focused on satisfaction in patient experience management?

When was the last time in your patient experience management efforts, you looked at the entirety of the patient experience inside and out, as opposed to what takes place inside the four walls of the hospital?

From the questions and requests I receive regarding patient experience management, it's usually preference by we are looking t improve our satisfaction scores. And interestingly enough, well , I find it interesting, is that these questions come not from healthcare marketers, but from clinicians and quality professionals who have been charged with improving the patient experience. Really, they are fully versed on how the patient views the totality of the organization beyond the clinical experience?

Patient satisfaction is but one indicator of experience, not the be all and end all. Experience management is about the totality of the patients experience a from first contact through diagnosis, treatment, discharge and post care. So why then you are only focusing on the inpatient or ambulatory experience, as measured by satisfaction scores?. Your efforts are too focused and too narrow.

Patient Experience Management is all about the culture.

It is not managing to a survey.

It is not just a program.

It is not just a one-time activity.

Healthcare providers do "dumb things" all the time. And they never seem to learn from that experience. So what happens when test results aren't available, the bill is wrong and a person cannot get the information they want or is on hold for too long?

Well, all the compensatory goodwill built up in the patient encounter is lost because of these little "dumb mistakes" that healthcare providers make day-in and day-out. Those mistakes continue to build until they become non-compensatory event. Meaning that all the good encountered in the patient experience is washed away like a flood.

That's why it's important to view Patient Experience Management in its totality and not as an one service or clinical line experience. It may be for you, but to the healthcare customer-patient who views your organization across numerous touch-points and aggregates all of it into one overall experience, it's not.

Part of the process of experience management is actively managing customers-patients experiences to meet expectations and change their experiences to drive revenue and market share improvements. It's not all about the patient satisfaction numbers. Experience management has a definable and measurable financial outcome. But you cannot achieve those revenue outcomes if you are not looking at experience management in its totality.

By not fully understanding your customer-patient in their totality, you are not successfully managing their experience or expectations.

When was the last time you considered making marketing part of the experience management efforts beyond making things look pretty? Now that's a really dumb hospital mistake.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.

Are you using social media and online brand presence to make the patient experience exceptional?

With healthcare moving to a place where price and quality are drivers impacting a consumer who is sharing a much greater burden of the cost, those same consumers will eventually demand online social media experiences commonly found with other companies and services.

Online represents a great opportunity for patient-centric healthcare organizations to break from the pack and create an online healthcare experience that is memorable, exceeding an individual or families experience and expectations.

Are you ready for the challenge?

Most healthcare sites today are static and contain the usual about us, our services location, etc,., etc., etc. Little use of video or other creative ways to engage the customer. Notice that I said customer and not patient. Not everyone that comes to your site is a patient or will be a patient. They are consumers looking for information. Could be a competitor too.

In any case, when you evaluate your social media and online presence, does it:

Delight your customer?
Create sustainable differentiation?
Is adaptable to new opportunities?
Leverages your investment?
Deliver in every situation?

This is the lens that you need to look through to objectively evaluate your social or online presence. If it's not doing these things, then chances are you are not delivering an exceptional experience. But for that matter, neither are your competitors. In the world of healthcare which is too much "me too", the online healthcare experience is pretty boring.

Don't take me wrong, healthcare sites are usually pretty good if people internally have been paying attention to them. They can be described as warm, comfortable, informative, friendly. They can be described as "good enough". Not exceptional. Not delivering anywhere to the capability inherent in an online presence.

I would suggest to hospitals, IDNs, nursing home, specialty pharmacies, home healthcare operations and many others, that you look outside of the your segment of healthcare to consumer facing retail organizations, as well as pharma and medical device, viewing the type of online presence they have.

Make your online presence not just "good enough" but exceptional.

The time is now. The opportunity to change is here.

Customer/Patient Experience Management Applied to Healthcare

Happy New Year everyone. Welcome to 2011 and a new decade!

There is an increasing amount of activity in what healthcare organizations are calling Patient Experience Management (PEM). Patient Experience Management is not a new concept. In reality, it is Customer Experience Management partially applied to healthcare.

Customer Experience Management (CEM) first appeared 13 years ago in an article published by the Harvard Business Review authored by Pine and Gilmore. The concept proposes that by managing the entirety of the customer experience from first contact to purchase or use, that you can move a customer from satisfied to loyal and then from loyal to brand advocate by actively managing the experience. It is based on thoroughly understanding the customer. Essentially end-to-end management of the chain of events that an individual experiences . Since that time CEM has grown and evolved to became an important business requirement.

This is a critically important topic for healthcare. And it's not just about reading an article, thinking you know all about it and start a program. I submit that it is time we begin thinking about individuals not as patients but as customers.

We need to look at CEM not PEM.

The reason for this?

Two-thirds of an individual's interaction with a healthcare provider is as a customer pre and post treatment. Only one-third of their encounter with you is as a patient during treatment.

Let me repeat.......

Two-thirds of an individual's interaction with a healthcare provider is as a customer pre and post treatment. Only one-third of their encounter with you is as a patient during treatment.

A healthcare provider's ability to deliver an experience that sets it apart in the eyes of its payers, physicians and consumers/patients from its competitors - traditional and non-traditional - serves to increase their spending and loyalty to the brand.

CEM actively manages the customer experience in total by understanding the customer's point of view. That is, all touch points internally and externally that a customer comes in contact with which in turn creates the experience. PEM looks at only one aspect of the exchange and interaction. That which occurs internally when a customer is a patient. It does not consider all of a consumer/patient's cross channel exposure, interactions and transactions with the healthcare provider.

CEM requires you to see the "patient" as an individual customer with distinct needs and expectations that is developed across the organization externally and internally. It requires a complete and thorough understanding of all customers, their needs and expectations.

This is just the first in a series on Customer Experience Management. Healthcare namely hospitals and other direct care providers have done the Total Quality Management, Continuous Quality Improvement, Lean Management, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, Built to Last, In Search of Excellence, etc. All good systems, all good approaches but for one reason or another have come up short in healthcare. We still have the same cost and quality issues when this all started years ago.

Now maybe it's time we started to focus on the customer, their needs and expectations to grow profitably.

In the next posting we will look at some examples in other industries where CEM is being successfully deployed.

You can continue the conversation with me on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, customer experience management, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations , I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.

Online Healthcare Marketing, Making the Customer Experience Exceptional

In the new world of healthcare where price and quality are the key drivers of an informed consumer, sharing a much greater burden of the cost, will begin to demand experiences online that they commonly have with other companies.

Online represents a great opportunity for consumer directed healthcare organizations to break from the pack and create an online healthcare experience that is memorable and exceeds an individuals or families experience, expectations.

Are you ready for the challenge?

Most healthcare sites today are static containing the usual about us, our services location, etc., etc., etc. Little use of video or other creative ways to engage the customer. Notice that I said customer and not patient. Not everyone that comes to your site is a patient or will be a patient. They are consumers looking for information. Could be a competitor too.

In any case, when you look at your site, does it:

Delight your customer?

Create sustainable differentiation?

Is adaptable to new opportunities?

Leverages your investment?

Deliver in every situation?

This is the lens that you need to look through to objectively evaluate your site. If it's not doing these things, then chances are you are not delivering an exceptional online experience. But for that matter, neither are your competitors. In a the world of healthcare which is too much "me too", the online healthcare experience is pretty boring.

Don't take me wrong, healthcare sites are usually pretty good if people internally have been paying attention to them. They can be described as warm, comfortable, informative, friendly. They can be described as "good enough". Not exceptional. Not delivering anywhere near to the capability inherent in an online presence.

I would suggest to hospitals, IDNs, nursing home, home healthcare operations and many others, that you look outside of the your segment of healthcare to pharma, medical device and other companies, viewing the type of online presence they have. Look to healthcare organizations in Europe and Asia. Look at retail organizations.

Make your online presence not just "good enough" but exceptional.

The time is now. The opportunity to change is here.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
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Michael Krivich is Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association and can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for consulting services in strategic marketing, integration of sales and marketing, media relations and interim marketing executive leadership assignments. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations , I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.