Ep. 24 Patient Engagement Can Create Customer Experience in Healthcare

Customer Experience in Healthcare Does Not Exist without Engagement

Rohan Kulkarni is the healthcare practice lead at HFS Research. HFS Research is recognized as second to Gartner in healthcare influence among decision-makers.

In this episode, we discuss the “triple aim” model, which addresses the three pillars in healthcare:

  1. Improving patient outcomes
  2. Reducing the cost of care
  3. Enhancing the care experience through engagement

In our limited time together, we reviewed the first two pillars and spoke in more detail on the third pillar, enhancing the care experience, which is equivalent to the customer experience in business.

Rohan’s background is in product management in health plans. Most recently, he was CIO at Versant Health before joining HFS Research. His extensive background in healthcare and being a consumer of healthcare services (as we all are) has led him to many insights on these three pillars and ways we can improve the care experience.

The Triple Aim Construct in Healthcare

The triple aim is recognized as a construct to measure how well we are doing in delivering healthcare services. In the U.S., the cost of healthcare has been increasing at twice the rate of inflation. Chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiac disease are on the rise. Life expectancy in the U.S. has declined from 79 to 78 years of age, despite rapid advancements in healthcare technology. This data supports the need for a triple aim engagement model.

Enhancing the Care Experience through Engagement

A healthcare consumer is a patient and a healthy member of a healthcare plan, possibly an employee, or a beneficiary of a government program. Each role is unique, with different expectations.

In reality, the current state of healthcare is sick care. The experience at the point of care happens when people are already ill and trying to get back to health. However, we could benefit significantly from increased engagement with our healthcare providers and professionals when we are healthy.

In a traditional customer journey model, a brand engages with consumers at different touchpoints throughout their purchasing journey. In healthcare, there is no current construct of engagement. Healthcare engagement is limited to transactions at the point of care.

The opportunity to improve is providing omnichannel engagement during the patient’s life journey before they are sick. This approach can increase the chance of the patient remaining healthy and/or recognizing circumstances that warrant healthcare treatment sooner to reduce the severity of illness and the cost of care.

Ownership-Based Engagement

An HFS Research study found that a healthy consumer with an income above the median wage is more satisfied with their experience at their point of care. By comparison, those dealing with illness and whose income is below the median wage are less satisfied with their healthcare experience. This data calls out the inequity in healthcare in the U.S.

Rohan points out that the potential remedy to address this inequity is to create an engagement process with shared ownership among the stakeholders, including the patient, the entities providing care delivery (e.g., hospitals, doctor groups, etc.), and employers who either self-insure or insure through traditional carriers.

Rohan points out the importance of educating consumers with vital information to enable them to improve their healthcare journey. Allowing the patients to manage their data and chart their choices in food and activities with accurate information in a shared ownership model would go a long way toward improving healthcare.

More than Just a Transactional Model

Setting up an engagement model would create a shared experience with incentives among all the stakeholders to maximize better health outcomes and reduce the cost of care delivery. Giving consumers a reason to stay healthy through information and resources would benefit all the stakeholders.

The health plan providers and employers should also be encouraged to engage patients during their healthy times, mainly since so many chronic conditions are often poorly managed for many reasons, including a lack of accurate information consumed by patients.

For effective engagement to happen, patients need to be educated about their health choices. And when they do need sick care, they need support and assistance with medication and other care details.

The Future of Triple Aim

Rohan hopes we will eventually reduce cost and improve patient outcomes and improve engagement, largely through evolving technology and the availability of innovative health plans.

Our population is constantly evolving. Lifestyles are changing. We’re likely to see more consumer engagement and literacy on healthcare topics. Healthcare distribution channels, including employers and the government, will play a different role, mainly as information concierges. As new distribution models emerge, they can disrupt the industry in favor of engagement and better patient outcomes.

Not surprisingly, Rohan enjoys a healthy lifestyle. He enjoys cooking healthy meals and hiking with his wife on the Appalachian trails near his home in northern Virginia.

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 23 Three Strategies for Creating Stronger Employee Relationships

Companies That Thrive on Disruption Have Strong Employee Relationships

Charlene Li is renowned as a strategic thinker. She helps leaders and organizations thrive with disruption as an author, speaker, advisor, and board member. She has worked with dozens of companies such as IBM, Oracle, 3M, Adobe, Cisco, Dell, Intel, and Microsoft, to name a few. She has authored six books, the most recent titled: The Disruption Mindset – Why Some Organizations Transform, While Others FailShe is prolific at sharing content through her LinkedIn live streams and on Twitter and Clubhouse, sharing her thought leadership on the disruption mindset.

In this episode, Charlene discusses disruption in business, starting with what it is, why it is important for leaders to embrace it, and her recommendations to create stronger employee relationships within the disruption model. 

What is Disruption and Why it Matters

Charlene grew up in Detroit, where she was the only person of color in her early school years. Her presence alone was a disruption that prepared her mindset to look at mainstream principles through a different lens.

Now, she looks at the rapid evolution of technology as an opportunity for companies to thrive. In other words, she helps business leaders look at change and disruption as excellent opportunities for growth.

Charlene’s first book is the critically acclaimed Groundswell, which was published in 2008 when social media was in its early days. In this book, Charlene and her co-author Josh Bernoff encouraged business leaders to embrace the disruption of social media as an opportunity to engage and communicate with their audience. Leaders frequently asked her why do some companies thrive in disruption and others fail? So, she set out to research what’s different about those companies that thrive in disruption over and over again.

The Disruption Mindset

For a company to thrive in disruption, there must be a vision for what the future looks like. It begins with leadership, but the employees must catch the vision and trust leadership’s commitment and ability to embrace the disruption to thrive. Disruption will take people out of their comfort zone. Employees must trust their leaders to succeed in the midst of disruption. Leaders must have a plan to bring employees with them willingly on the disruption journey to a new future.

What it Takes to Create Stronger Employee Relationships

Charlene identifies three strategies for creating strong employee relationships to enable the disruption mindset to thrive across the organization. They are:

  • Integrity
  • Agency
  • Openness

Integrity

Leaders who do what they say they’re going to do with consistency between action and messaging operate with integrity. Employees know the difference between empty promises and actions that live out the company’s values. Leaders should communicate the reason for a different future, how the company needs to get there, how each employee is integral to getting there, and why it’s valuable to the employee. Beyond communication, leaders must live it every day to be recognized for integrity. Building long-term, sustained employee relationships start with integrity, which leads to long-term trust.

Agency

Agency means that employees believe in the mission and work hard to achieve the strategies defined by leadership. When agency is present, employees behave like owners in the business with accountability for their actions because they genuinely care. In other words, they are bought into the vision and they want to help achieve it.   

Openness

This is the simple concept that nothing is hidden. That everything not considered company confidential is out in the open and available for discussion. No question is off the table.

Charlene points out that these three strategies are intermixed to define the relationship between leaders and employees in the disruption mindset.

How to Implement Integrity, Agency, Openness

Charlene points out that leaders must be committed to building relationships with employees by defining what the relationship looks like. Leaders should document the attributes of their desired relationship with their teams as the starting point in this process.

At iQor, we deploy a weekly Mood-o-Meter survey to our contact center agents to measure their current mood. Anyone who scores low for more than one week in a row gets contacted by a skip-level manager to set up a meeting. These meetings allow the employee to discuss what’s on their mind. The relationship and trust built in these skip-level meetings exemplify our attempt at integrity, agency, and openness.   

Borrow Best Practices from the Marketing Department

Your marketing team is adept at listening and communicating with customers. Employers should adopt some of these marketing practices to listen and engage with employees in relationship building, treating them with the same care as customers are treated.

A Long-Term View of the Employee Relationship

The lines are blurred between an employee’s life outside of work and at work in the digital age. Employers should embrace the employee’s whole self, including their passion and dreams. By providing a supportive work environment that allows employees to thrive as an individual working toward their long-term dreams the relationship between employer and employee is strengthened. 

Infusing Integrity, Agency, and Openness into Employee Relationships

Imagine speaking with an employee about their last day at your company on their first day. Strong relationships are built if we talk openly with employees about their aspirations and offer support to help them achieve their dreams. In return, the employee is more likely to have a strong relationship with their employer while they work there. Additionally, we can ask cooperation to receive more than two weeks’ notice of resignation and the employee’s commitment to help hire and train a replacement. This level of relationship lives beyond current employment and breeds agency among employees.

What Charlene Does for Fun

Charlene is a serious business leader who enjoys playing with her cat named Cosmo. She has trained him to do tricks, which he is motivated to do for treats. She says he performs about a dozen tricks, such as jumping through hoops and playing with cups and balls. Charlene loves dogs, but with her busy travel schedule, a cat is purrfect for her lifestyle. 

Learn more about Charlene’s books and other valuable resources at her website.

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.